Traveling alone, Orson no longer held anything back.
Amid jagged peaks he swung the Chaos Blade, carving razor lines of force into the stone.
He moved fast, but he moved with purpose, one step at a ti.
Like an ancient sage from old legends, he split mountains and opened the road, cutting a skyward stair for those who would co after in The Sunforge World. He didn’t believe the outside would automatically be so promised paradise. But the people of this world deserved to see it for themselves. Whether the air out there was blood and smoke or birdsong and blossom was beside the point. Choice was their birthright.
"This layer is empty."
He stepped out of the Eighty-first Heaven with a small shake of the head. No one remained inside. Outside lay only scorched earth. A battle had raged here, but the scars said the fight hadn’t ended on this level.
It had gone higher.
Orson climbed without fear.
He passed through several more empty heavens. He found fragnts of Destroyers, but not their killers. From the residual energy he could tell the defenders had been powerful, and not alone. The elental signatures across a hundred kiloters told him the totem beasts of multiple tribes had fought here, at least quasi-divine tier. At least two forbidden-level skills had detonated.
If not for the sacred mountain’s impossible solidity, the entire mountainside would have been punched through and collapsed.
"King tier adventurers," Orson murmured when he reached the Ninetieth Heaven.
Four mangled bodies. One was a girl with human features so perfect she could have been Earthborn. A faint godring still hovered above her. A five-shift prodigy, the kind that ca once in a century.
If the Wolf twins were here, they would have known her na.
Even one so brilliant had died anyway. Cleaved clean in half. Two halves a kiloter apart. Her face frozen in fury and disbelief.
"Cut down by stronger Destroyers?"
Orson knelt and examined the wound. His gaze chilled. Oily black fighting aura crawled along the sundered flesh, its malignancy still spreading. Twisted sigils crept across the corpse like a plague, gnawing the at from within.
"Black douqi..."
He stiffened. The power Destroyers used did not feel like magic. It was so other energy mimicking the elents. But douqi belonged to warriors and knights of the Infinite Dinsions. This residue reeked of filth and malice. Just by getting close, he could almost hear a thousand ghosts keening.
Not the Destroyers’ work.
"Strange. I sll an old acquaintance," he thought, heart hamring. He buried the dead where they lay with a sigh. The road to heaven was paved with bones.
The next few layers were quiet and empty. No anomalies. No adventurers.
Inside the Ninety-fifth Heaven he pulverized a high-tier demon into paste with a lazy sweep of the Supre Arcane Blade.
It made sense that no one chose to "idle" here. These levels spawned monsters that were all titans. Even a King-tier would have to gamble his life. Compared to the Eightieth, which spawned mid-tier demons, the upper heavens baked in long, intentional lulls. Ti to breathe so climbers wouldn’t simply die of exhaustion.
He stepped out of the cave.
A flash of teal lit the air.
"You have got to be kidding ..."
A ship scread past, shaped like a giant fan-bladed shield, shouldering against a gravity well like an ocean liner pressing through a hurricane, forcing itself upward.
Orson stared, dumbstruck.
Compared to his stone-carved stairway, this was... embarrassing. Soone had brought a cable car to a pilgrimage.
Wait.
A warship?
The Sunforge World was cursed. Artifacts and divine items wouldn’t function. Where did a warship co from? Even if it arrived from another world, the local rules crushed anything that tried to fly.
So how was that bizarre vessel climbing?
It was absurd.
Zone chat lit up.
"Ha! Made it to the Ninety-fifth! Our kingdom never reached this high!"
"Six-shift? If he’s so great, have him catch our uprising army at the summit!"
"The almighty Godmaster watches over us! We’ll finally see the top of The Sunforge World!"
Voices tumbled over each other.
Orson stood there numb. They were supposed to climb, and these clowns took the lift. Who wouldn’t feel salty?
"Soone’s there! On Ninety-five! Ancestors, what kind of ancient monster is that?"
Heads crowded the rail of the ship’s deck. Hundreds of newly awakened craned their necks to gawk at Orson like he was an exhibit.
His face darkened. He felt like a zoo animal on a rock.
"It’s him! How long has it been? He’s already at Ninety-five?" Recognition rippled across the deck. Then they noticed the gouged staircase running up the mountain, and their awe turned to sothing close to fear.
"Enough," Orson said, lifting the Supre Arcane Blade. He was a heartbeat from swatting them down so they could hike with everyone else.
"You are impressive," a familiar arrogant voice cut in, "but you are not the chosen who will free this world."
Samuel, Earth Kingdom’s upstart king, smiled down his nose. "Only the Godmaster can save the people."
"Is that so?"
Orson’s smile turned thin. He lowered the blade. Let’s see this Godmaster, then.
He scanned the ship’s stats and saw what he needed.
The vessel was called Immortal Lord, flagged as Eternal. Its specs matched a nation-killer. Which ant the Godmaster, if not a Destroyer, had at least made a deal with them. Otherwise no Eternal ship would be ferrying his followers to the summit.
These outsiders were no joke. Forget their mimicking combat machines. A warship that could defy the mountain’s rule-field was terrifying. Which ant a deeper truth: they had a way to counter godly domains.
The Sacred Mountain was Fire God’s ga-dungeon. Anyone within was caged by his law.
The Eternals had an answer. That, more than anything, shocked Orson.
He watched Immortal Lord vanish into cloud and drove his sword harder, carving faster. He was done taking his ti. He wanted answers.
Where did these demons co from.
Who exactly were the Eternals.
And this Godmaster. Was he the man Orson suspected?
He breached the Ninety-eighth Heaven.
The clouds above thinned and fell away. A river of stars burned in the vault, bright enough to touch, as if he could lift a hand and pluck one free.
He did not stop. Another hour, another flight of coarse-hewn steps.
The Ninety-ninth Heaven.
The sky and wind shifted. The starfield vanished. The blizzard cut off like soone closed a door. Orson stared.
An endless desert sprawled to the horizon. On its rim, just visible, an ancient city of unimaginable grandeur stood like a mirage.
You have discovered Atlantis.
The words scrolled across his interface.
Gooseflesh rippled down his neck, his scalp prickling. Atlantis. For soone born on Earth, the na hit like thunder. As if his blood ran backward.
A journey across ti.
Who would ever imagine that, in so distant corner of the galaxy, in another world, he would see a na so alien and so familiar.
He looked up.
Amber light bled across the sky. A floating continent hung suspended among sun and moon and stars. Temples crowned the island. Aurora lanced upward and spilled outward, draping the world below in silken white radiance. A colossal cocoon of light wrapped the planet.
Beyond that cocoon lay the void.
And there, in the dark, shadows beyond counting flickered and drifted. Bio-ships, organic leviathans kiloters long, cruised like a migratory swarm. Pinpricks of light blossod across the cocoon’s surface. From a distance they looked like ripples.
Orson went pale. You had to see it to understand. Each burst, each tiny ripple, was the kind of energy that could erase a great city and its tens of millions. The cocoon held. The divine will of the Ancestor Emperor absorbed it like rain against a roof.
"This," Orson whispered, voice shaking, "this is what gods really are."
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