“Comrades, hello. Intelligence cutoff: 08:00, August 18.”
At the Windrest City guesthouse, morning sunlight poured through the shutters.
Qi Heng sat slumped in his room, dark circles carved under his eyes. He was so tired his hands shook, but he still forced himself to write—trading notes with the other official players through the research network.
“Same as the night of the 16th.
Last night (the 17th), Windrest City saw more than a dozen self-harm incidents.
Patterns: self-castration, and people skinning themselves alive.
At this point, it’s safe to say these cases are tied to the Sorrow Theater.
My six mentors entered the theater on the night of the 15th. They still aren’t sane.
Symptoms look like bipolar agitation mixed with early Alzheimer’s.
My junior, Bonnie, has brewed every potion she can think of, but nothing has made a noticeable difference.
My life has turned into pure chaos.
Yes, this is internal correspondence, but I have to say it anyway—what the hell is this?
As for what’s on the theater’s first floor: I still don’t know. The mentors can’t communicate.
What I do know is this: the danger rating of a Lost Land is extremely high. Do not engage casually.
My personal guess is that every Lost Land has its own rule-set, and the ancient trolls recorded those rules somewhere.”
Qi Heng paused, rubbed his face, then kept writing.
“This morning I received a letter from the comrade responsible for organizing the guild.
Unlike my disaster, their new round of strikes went smoothly and won real concessions for the workers.
But their sailors reported something else:
A massive sea-monster corpse was found near Route C-91.
They say it looked like a starfish—only the size was absurd, larger than a whaling ship.
A specialist identified it as a mindless, low-grade supernatural lifeform. Name: Sea Tumor.
The people who know their stuff say it died recently. Its body shows heavy burn damage and injuries consistent with deck cannon fire.
Who could have killed something that big, they can’t say.
What worries them most is that Route C-91 is a dense commercial corridor. Sea Tumors shouldn’t be here—unless something is attracting them.
So what appeared near the junction of Routes C-91 and B-55?
Anyone operating at sea: please keep an eye on this.”
Qi Heng sank back in his chair. He hadn’t slept all night, but the letter was finally done.
He fed the pages into a Fire-Seal Orb. Sparks spiraled up; the thick packet vanished into ashless nothing.
He sealed the gray ceramic jar, dropped it into his system inventory, and dragged himself toward the washbasin—cursing his rotten life the whole way.
Windrest City’s residents were terrified. Every night, people “randomly” lost their minds and turned knives on themselves.
Because of the methods, men were far more afraid than women.
Two days ago, crowds still gathered at the docks for gossip.
Now everyone avoided the Sorrow Theater like a plague—and they were furious, because the theater had ruined their lives.
And the ones absorbing that fury were the Violet Eye delegation.
In the eyes of the locals, the city’s madness started because those Weaver mages came to “explore the unknown.”
When Qi Heng first arrived on Storm Island, the people of Windrest had looked at them with envy. They were a polished envoy with the king’s writ, arriving by advanced ships, dressed like nobility, welcomed by the governor himself.
If he had to compare it to the player world, they’d been a state visit: priority lanes, sirens, and a clean entourage.
Now? Windrest treated them like rats.
Qi Heng chewed on the cold bread a servant had delivered and let out a long sigh.
Ever since the city turned hostile, even the food had degraded—breakfast used to be bacon, eggs, milk.
Now it was a stale lump of yesterday’s bread.
Still… today the archmages from Floating Isle were due to arrive.
Finally, someone would come mop up the mess.
*
“I remember what that sea monster was,” Thea said.
On the Ambush, in a cramped crew cabin near the deck, the black cat hopped onto the table and watched Rhine change into dry clothes.
He’d wrung out the set he’d soaked last night while fishing up an electric sea-eel, and now it hung from a line in the corner, dripping lazily.
“What makes you so sure?” Rhine asked, smoothing a sleeve.
“It’s called a Sea Tumor. No intelligence—low-grade supernatural biology that lives on instinct.” Thea’s tail flicked. “But even low-grade is still supernatural. It gets drawn to supernatural energy.”
Rhine’s expression tightened.
“You think the thing that dragged it onto a ‘safe’ route is the new island?”
“That’s my guess,” Thea said. “We didn’t drift off the corridor. It wasn’t luck. Something pulled it in.”
Route C-91 was old. Ships had run it for years without the usual ‘monster attack’ stories.
A Sea Tumor showing up out of nowhere meant one thing.
The new island, born out of the storm, was broadcasting something.
“If that’s true,” Rhine said quietly, “then the island has an active supernatural presence.”
“Exactly.”
A part of Rhine felt uneasy.
But another part—older and harder—felt a different pull.
The diviner’s letter-opener had given him a line that stuck like a hook: the storm at sea would bring opportunity.
The storm had brought an island.
So the opportunity was there.
“Do we still go?” Thea asked. “Now that we’ve basically confirmed there’s something on it.”
Rhine stared at the map spread across the table.
“We go,” he said. “We’re already here.”
He’d rather the island hold danger than nothing at all. No supernatural presence meant no answers, no leverage, no loot—no way forward.
“I’ll talk to the captains,” Rhine said. “We make it airtight.”
*
The Ambush hove to near the newborn island under a bright August sky.
Rhine had already shared his suspicions with Captains Andrew and John.
Andrew—captain, brother, and the man who’d lost crew to the storm—couldn’t let it go. Not when the island was right there.
So they set a compromise.
They anchored in the closest safe water and swung the deck gun to cover the beach.
John, one-armed, stayed aboard with the chief engineer and a gunner to keep the ship alive and ready for emergency retrieval.
The rest would go in with hunting rifles and search for the men who’d fallen overboard.
As for Thea, Rhine didn’t want an unknown presence cutting their retreat. He kept her on the Ambush—guarding the ship and acting as a second layer of response.
Andrew and John had been captains for decades, but even they deferred to Rhine’s planning.
He had experience with supernatural threats. And he’d built the plan like a checklist.
Morning sun warmed the seawater.
They climbed into a skiff and rowed for the sand.
Ten of them total: Rhine, Captain Andrew, and eight crewmen.
From the water, the island looked like Moonlight Isle all over again—fine pale sand, then a wall of green so dense it swallowed the horizon.
Rhine had used Appraisal Eye from the Ambush.
It only returned basic information. Nothing about the supernatural.
But it did note one important thing: the island itself was not a supernatural construct.
In the waters near the Wild Sea, some islands were alive. They had will. Hunger. Malice.
Land on one of those with a group of ordinary men, and you were volunteering for a funeral.
This island wasn’t like that.
If there was something supernatural here, then something—or someone—had brought it.
The skiff ground onto the beach.
They jumped down, boots sinking into warm sand, and immediately started sweeping the shoreline.
If the men who’d fallen overboard had reached land, there would be signs.
A tear in brush.
A drag mark.
Footprints.
Captain Andrew was frantic, but a shout went up.
They gathered around a thorny hedge near the inland edge of the beach.
A strip of shredded cloth hung from the brambles like a flag.
“Blue plaid!” Andrew’s voice cracked. “That’s Mark’s shirt!”
Rhine kept his tone calm, gentle.
“Mark and the others probably ran into something on the beach,” he said. “Or just beyond it.”
The crew were old sea hands. They didn’t need the words ‘dead’ or ‘taken’ to understand.
Andrew’s mouth opened, then shut.
His brother. His sailors.
Somewhere in that forest.
But the forest might hold something supernatural.
Reason told him not to trade living men for lost ones.
The other half of him—the part that still remembered faces—couldn’t accept leaving without trying.
He looked at Rhine like a drowning man reaching for a rope.
Rhine gave him an easy, reassuring smile.
“Captain, don’t panic. Bring everyone back to the open sand. I have a way to search the forest without risking you.”
After completing his last system objective, Rhine had been rewarded with a paper doll servant—an almost-puppet, almost-thrall he could reshape and command.
A disposable scout.
He could send it into the green wall to search for Mark while the real people stayed in daylight, under the deck gun’s protection.
Andrew exhaled, relief punching through his fear.
No matter how this ended, he swore he’d thank Rhine properly once they were back on land.
That was when the buzzing started.
A mosquito-like whine skimmed past their ears.
Summer islands had bugs. No one cared.
Andrew waved a hand to shoo it away—
—and then froze.
These weren’t normal mosquitoes.
They were big. Too big.
And they swarmed as if they’d smelled fresh meat.
Rhine tracked one with a supernatural hunter’s focus.
One glance was enough to make his stomach drop.
He couldn’t name the species, but he knew poison.
Every insect was slicked in a coat of paralytic toxin.
Rhine might shrug off that dose.
The ordinary crewmen couldn’t.
He sucked in a breath to warn them—
Too late.
One of the outer men collapsed in the sand.
Another.
Men in the middle.
Andrew, closest to Rhine, dropped like his strings had been cut.
In the same heartbeat, a mosquito with an oily green sheen settled on Rhine’s hand.