Ethan kept staring into the distance, mind still circling the lion-headed figure.
Greedy Wolf.
If that really was him… then things were moving faster than Ethan liked.
Silvermoon watched him for a moment, then spoke in a tone that cut through the haze.
“Since you’ve already guessed it,” she said, “I’ll answer your earlier question.”
Ethan looked back at her. “Which one?”
“The one you’ve been holding in your throat since Moonlight Isle.” Silvermoon’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Why the Seven Gods bother with you at all.”
Ethan didn’t pretend. “Why?”
Silvermoon exhaled, and the playful edge in her face faded.
“Because we’re trapped,” she said. “All of us.”
She lifted her hand and let it fall. The mirror-water under their feet rippled outward.
“The Endless Sea isn’t just a game world. It’s a cage. A machine. A butcher’s table.” Her mouth twisted. “And the one who built it – the Creator – still holds the knife.”
Ethan’s chest tightened. “The Creator God.”
Silvermoon didn’t correct him.
“The Lava Lord is our greatest enemy,” she continued. “The Seven Gods fought it. We lost. We were sealed inside the Endless Sea, forced to exist under the Creator’s rules. Most of the time, all we can do is push a little wind through the cracks and hope it lands where it matters.”
Ethan thought of the storm that had pinned the Split Serpent. He didn’t like how small that made the gods feel.
“And you think I matter,” he said slowly, “because of my Talent.”
Silvermoon’s gaze sharpened. “Yes.”
No ceremony. No comfort.
Just truth.
“You should know how the System really works,” she said. “When a ‘player’ appears in a world, someone else disappears.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “You mean the replacements.”
“Exactly.” Silvermoon’s voice stayed level. “The worlds the Creator harvests were never empty. Every time the System chooses players, it steals the places those souls would have taken. Those souls don’t vanish.”
She paused.
“They’re taken.”
Ethan felt a chill crawl up his spine. “Taken by who?”
Silvermoon’s expression darkened. “Amm.”
The Death-Guide God.
“The souls that should have been born as players – every one of them ends up in Amm’s hands,” Silvermoon said. “That means Amm knows who is a player the moment they appear. He knows their Talents. He knows what kind of ‘tool’ the Creator just put into the world.”
Ethan’s jaw clenched. “And he told you about me.”
“He told all of us,” Silvermoon said. “Because your Talent isn’t normal.”
She leaned in, eyes bright and merciless.
“SSS-rank SSS-Rank Infinite Fishing. A hook that can reach past the rules. A chance.”
Ethan didn’t like being reduced to a chance.
He swallowed it anyway.
“So what do you want from me?” he asked.
Silvermoon straightened. “To finish what we can’t finish alone.”
Ethan stared at her. “Free yourselves.”
“Free the Endless Sea,” Silvermoon corrected.
The distinction hit harder than it should have.
Ethan’s voice turned sharp. “And what does that have to do with Faraniel’s notebook? With the Moonshadow Elixir? With you using Delanna’s body to show up and flirt with a mermaid?”
Silvermoon’s lips twitched, then she sighed.
“Fine,” she said. “Let’s talk about Faraniel.”
Ethan didn’t blink. He remembered the name too well: a man who’d died clinging to a notebook like it was the last scrap of his world.
Silvermoon spoke like she was reciting an old, unpleasant report.
“You drifted onto Moonlight Isle,” she said. “That island is mine. I left a bottle of Moonshadow Elixir there on purpose, with a price.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “His notebook.”
“His notebook,” Silvermoon agreed.
“Why?”
Silvermoon’s gaze slid to Xueyu, who was still silent behind Ethan, listening like a hunted creature.
“Because we needed information we couldn’t get ourselves,” Silvermoon said. “About the origin of the Endless Sea. About the Creator.”
Ethan waited.
Silvermoon’s voice grew colder.
“Merfolk know more than they should,” she said. “They were here before the System’s ‘players.’ They remember things the sea tries to bury.”
Xueyu flinched at the word merfolk.
Silvermoon noticed. For a heartbeat, something like guilt flickered in her eyes – then vanished.
“Unfortunately,” she went on, “the Seven Gods and the merfolk have a history. Especially me.”
Ethan didn’t need the details spelled out. Xueyu’s fear already had.
“So you can’t ask them,” Ethan said.
“We can’t even approach them,” Silvermoon said flatly. “They’d rather drown us than speak to us.”
Ethan’s eyes hardened. “Then why Faraniel?”
Silvermoon’s mouth twisted into something almost amused.
“Because Faraniel was… special,” she said. “Not in the way heroes are special. In the way disasters are.”
Ethan waited, suspicious.
Silvermoon continued, sounding like she hated the memory.
“He was a flirt with no limits. Humans, elves, beastfolk – if it breathed, he’d smile at it. And at some point, he crossed paths with the merfolk leader.”
Ethan’s brows rose. “Shara.”
Silvermoon nodded. “Shara. That woman was the sharpest blade in the sea, and somehow he still managed to get close.”
Xueyu’s fingers tightened against Ethan’s sleeve at the name.
“We hoped,” Silvermoon said, “that if any player had ever pried a secret out of the merfolk, it would be him. We hoped he’d left clues in his notebook – something about the Creator, something about how the Endless Sea was built.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened. “And did he?”
Silvermoon’s gaze darkened.
“He didn’t give us what we wanted willingly,” she said. “He refused to join us. He blamed the Seven Gods for what happened to his world. And then…”
Her voice thinned.
“…his world was sacrificed.”
Ethan’s stomach sank.
Silvermoon didn’t look away.
“The Creator doesn’t just run the Endless Sea,” she said. “It feeds it. Worlds are fuel. When one world is drained, it’s discarded. Another is brought in. Over and over.”
Ethan felt sick. “You’re saying the Endless Sea is built on sacrifices.”
“Yes.” Silvermoon’s voice was steady. “And that’s why we need to break the Creator’s control.”
Ethan stared at the perfect blue sky above their heads. It suddenly felt like a painted ceiling.
“The Creator God…” he said slowly. “Is it really a god?”
Silvermoon’s smile was thin.
“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe it’s something colder.”
She paused, then said the word like it tasted wrong.
“A supercomputer.”
Ethan blinked. “A what?”
“A machine that can calculate worlds,” Silvermoon said. “I’ve heard of things like that. A mind made of logic, not blood. If the Creator is a god, it behaves like a machine. If it’s a machine… then all this cruelty is just efficiency.”
Ethan’s hands curled into fists. Rage rose in him, hot and useless.
Silvermoon watched him, expression unreadable.
“We’re not saints,” she said quietly. “We’ve done things we can’t wash off. But we don’t want to be batteries in someone else’s engine. We don’t want to watch worlds burn just to keep a cage running.”
She stepped closer, her voice lowering.
“And now, because of you – and because you brought her – ” her eyes flicked to Xueyu again ” – we finally have a path we didn’t have before.”
Ethan forced his breathing to slow. “What path?”
Silvermoon’s smile returned, sharp as a drawn bow.
“We already know how to free the Endless Sea from the Creator’s control,” she said.
Ethan’s pulse jumped.
Silvermoon’s eyes gleamed.
“All that’s left,” she whispered, “is to do it.”