September 28, the Endless Sea.
The fleets followed the Sea Tumor’s wake like a procession behind a grotesque saint.
With every ring the monster slipped through, the pressure in the air eased, and the volcano ahead grew sharper—jagged black stone, orange glow, ash drifting in lazy strands. It should have felt like victory.
Morning Star stayed close to Ethan, walking the deck with hands behind her back, looking entirely too pleased with herself.
“So,” she said, sing-song, “about the Sea Tumor thing…”
Ethan gave her a patient look. “It’s a sea. There are monsters in it.”
“Oh, stop.” She waved him off. “Then explain why the monster keeps showing up right when you need it.”
He had no intention of explaining Ocean Sovereign’s Might to anyone, least of all a wood elf who collected secrets like jewelry.
So he lied with a straight face.
“Sea Tumors don’t have much intelligence,” Ethan said. “They follow instinct. Sometimes instinct is… useful.”
Morning Star’s green eyes narrowed as she watched the other ships. The high-rank weavers, even Red Falcon, were busy with the barrier and the volcano. No one was paying attention to Ethan.
No one had connected the Sea Tumor to him.
Which, somehow, made Morning Star look prouder.
She leaned closer, lowering her voice as if sharing gossip. “You protect your secrets well, Rhine. You could be way more dramatic about it.”
Ethan sighed.
She basked in her own private triumph for a moment, then her expression brightened.
“You know who you remind me of? My student. You two would absolutely get along.”
“My… what?”
Morning Star blinked like she’d forgotten humans didn’t instantly accept being adopted into random mentorship arcs.
Ethan recovered quickly. A third-rank pillar of the Black-White Court having a student wasn’t strange. The strange part was how smug she looked about it.
He nodded, letting her talk.
The ships cut forward. Ash whipped in the wind, drying skin and lips. Ethan’s senses reached outward, and the filth in the water pressed against his mind like grease.
It wasn’t dangerous to him anymore.
Just disgusting.
“You brought your student on this mission?” Ethan asked, mostly to keep her from digging into Sea Tumors again. “The one who keeps sending you messages—an infiltrator?”
“Ah—no.” Morning Star laughed, offended on principle. “That one? Please. My student isn’t average.”
She lifted her chin so high she might’ve been challenging the sun.
“He was personally answered by the Stranger in the Shadows.”
Ethan nearly tripped on a coil of rope.
Personally answered?
There weren’t many people that could possibly describe.
He glanced at her. Morning Star looked painfully sincere. Also painfully practiced—like she’d told this story to half the ocean already.
That’s… not a secret. That’s a banner.
Ethan forced a polite smile. “Impressive.”
“And he’s so humble,” Morning Star added, voice dripping with satisfaction. “Always says names and origins are just passing clouds. Not worth mentioning.”
Ethan’s eye twitched.
Back in Goldlake Town, he’d met Morning Star while disguised and had refused to give her his name. She hadn’t pried—at the time. Now she was spinning it into a legend.
He kept his tone neutral. “So… who is this brilliant student of yours?”
Morning Star froze for half a heartbeat.
She laughed too loudly. “Oh, you know. He’s… very mysterious.”
Ethan stared at her.
She stared back, trying to look casual.
He decided, for his own sanity, to let it go.
They made small talk until the Sea Tumor—its job done—slipped back into the depths at Ethan’s unspoken command.
The moment the last ring of the barrier fell behind them and the ships entered the volcano’s inner waters, Ethan’s skin crawled.
Not because the taint intensified.
Because it didn’t.
If Cocoon—the Magma Lord—was truly here, the corruption should have been thicker. Suffocating. A rancid heat crawling up the spine.
Instead, the feeling loosened.
Like stepping out of a trash heap into ordinary air.
That made no sense.
Ethan’s eyes hardened as he watched the distant volcano. Something was wrong.
But everyone else was moving with confidence—especially Stowaway X, whose speedboat had finally been able to follow.
If the Earth Ring, the Black-White Court, and the Violet Eye had been misled… X hadn’t. X had a Tracker.
And X had been eerily sure.
Ethan spread Ocean Sovereign’s Might across the water and found him.
There—skimming behind the fleets, weaving through the safer channels.
X turned.
Not toward the main mouth of the volcano like the others.
Toward the far side.
Toward a set of coordinates on the Tracker that only he could see.
Ethan’s gaze flicked to the sea. A thin paper doll—one of his disposable servants—lifted off the deck and drifted into the air, invisible to anyone not looking for it.
A minute later, the paper doll followed X inland.
***
X climbed from his boat with a flashlight and gun, grumbling the whole time.
“Yeah, yeah. Spooky volcano. Whatever.”
He marched up a rough trail, surprisingly unbothered by the heat, and after an hour of switchbacks he reached a cave mouth carved into steep rock.
“Should be here,” he muttered.
He clicked on the flashlight and went in.
On the Earth Ring ship, Ethan’s hand paused mid-game.
He felt the paper doll’s feedback: taint, yes—but only slightly stronger than the volcano surface. Still nowhere near what a sleeping demigod-class monstrosity should radiate.
Ethan played a card with a moon painted on it.
Across the table, the other low-tier transcendents groaned. They were stuck on ship duty while the elites went hunting glory. Cards were their only distraction.
The paper doll, meanwhile, drifted deeper into the cave.
Inside, X found… nothing.
No swarming nightmare insects. No wards snapping at his ankles. No strange whispers. Just heat that kept rising, and rock walls that sweated with ash.
He rounded another bend. Lava ran in slow streams along the sides, glaring orange and white like liquid knives.
“Hell. I’m gonna cook in here,” X muttered, wiping sweat off his brow.
He raised his left arm and woke the Tracker screen.
A jagged map appeared.
Three marks: a bright white dot, a dim white dot, and a star that represented him.
The star was almost on top of the bright dot.
X zoomed in. The dim dot slid off-screen.
“Another hundred meters,” he said through his teeth. “Found you, you bastard.”
***
Ethan watched through the paper doll’s eyes as X pushed forward.
The world shook.
A deep groan rolled through the mountain. Dust burst from cracks. The tunnel bucked.
X swore, spun, and ran.
Rock began to fall.
A slab dropped straight toward his skull—
Electric light flashed around him.
His body blurred, turned half-transparent, and the next second he was ten meters away.
Not shadow travel. Not a System skill Ethan recognized.
Other-world mobility.
Ethan’s mind clicked into place. Useful.
On the ship, he threw down a random card like he wasn’t paying attention.
In the cave, X sprinted harder.
He hit the exit—
—and the sea rose to swallow him.
A wave, too big and too sudden to be natural, slammed into the shore and dragged him off his feet. X disappeared under frothing water, choking and flailing as the current hauled him away from the volcano.
He assumed the quake had triggered a tsunami.
He didn’t notice his left arm go light.
He didn’t notice the Tracker slip free.
The “tsunami” also died as fast as it had risen.
X broke the surface, sputtering, staring at calm water in disbelief.
Elsewhere, a single cresting spray carried a small rectangular device—X’s Tracker—toward the Earth Ring ship like a tossed coin.
“Rhine. Your turn,” someone said in the ship’s second-floor lounge.
Ethan blinked back into the card game, smiled apologetically, and played a card painted with the sun.
“Sorry. Looks like I take it.”
The others glanced at the spread, then groaned as one.
“By the Seven Gods,” a man complained, tossing his hand down. “How do you keep winning?”