Chapter 1 The Turbulent Realm

The Chaos Realm is a place of constant flux, where nothing can last for long. Even the mists across the wilderness have shifted in density and color many times over the years, and these changes often reflect the direction of order and chaos in the Kolos world—a matter of great importance to the mortals living within it, where every subtle clue concerns the survival of countless lives.

Thus, in their long struggle, humans have mastered many methods for observing and recording the Chaos Realm. One important type of recording facility is the Beacon Tower, a sacred artifact of protection.

The Beacon Tower is not only the heart of the ordered land but also a watchtower for monitoring the Chaos Realm. It can automatically record the power tides of the "Karnos Sea." Even if the beacon fire goes out, the runestone slabs used to build the tower can continue to operate and fulfill their recording duties for a long time. That is why Veronica first had to check the state of the Beacon Tower to understand what had happened here.

Information on corrupted demons cannot be preserved for long; once they weaken, they rapidly degrade and disintegrate. Therefore, investigating the demon corpses for clues is difficult, and the knights' inspection of the remains can only be considered better than nothing. The truly important clues are hidden on the four runestone slabs around the base of the Beacon Tower.

Interpreting these stone slabs is a skill that every noble must master. The old knight Morris is an expert in this area. After examining all the traces, the old man returned to Veronica and nodded to Hao Ren before speaking, "The situation is... strange."

"Strange?" Veronica frowned her heroic eyebrows, not expecting her teacher to give such an ambiguous answer after his examination. "Can you explain?"

"Chaotic magic and orderly power are both present on the runes, and the boundary between the two... is much smaller than the prescribed value."

It took Veronica a moment to realize the implications of this statement, and she was immediately stunned. "Are you sure you're not mistaken?"

Hao Ren, listening from the side, was completely bewildered. "Uh, what are you talking about?"

The expression on Veronica's face was very strange, as if she had just heard a fantastical story. She had to explain seriously, "It means... the traces left by the two forces on the runestone slabs are gradually converging. The boundary between chaos and order is becoming blurred... but this is impossible! How could such a thing happen in nature?"

Hao Ren scratched his head, deciding to pretend he understood. "Oh, I see. So what are you planning to do next?"

"I must report this to my father immediately," Veronica said, her hand on the hilt of her sword, her fingers slightly pale from the force. "This matter must be immediately submitted to the royal scholars for discussion. Only they can understand what this means."

The old knight Morris whispered, "We must also notify the Theocracy."

"The Theocracy..." Veronica's expression darkened slightly when she heard this name. She repeated the word with a frown, finally letting out a soft breath. "Let the ministers decide that. In any case, we'll set off immediately. Knights! Line up, prepare to depart!"

Hao Ren shrugged, not offering any opinion. He hadn't yet figured out many of the rules of this "Kolos world," so he would just observe silently for now. He watched Veronica and Morris organize the team and issue commands, while he quietly walked aside. During the brief wait before departure, he continued to try calling the Data Terminal and the Tortoise Rock Platform.

The signal feedback from the mental connection was still weak and full of noise, but it seemed a little clearer than before—the Data Terminal or Nolan must be trying various channels. Hao Ren believed they would eventually restore contact.

As the knights re-entered the chaotic mist, the light of the Beacon Tower gradually faded behind them, while in another corner of this world, other things were happening.

On the southern border of the Kingdom of Taros, the land came to an abrupt end. A "tail" of the Shadow Forest extended south and was neatly cut off here. The edge of the forest was an endless abyss, and dark mists churned at the bottom of this boundless cliff. Standing here and looking forward, it felt like standing at the end of the world—land, sea, rivers, forests, all ended here.

However, this was not the end of the world. This was only the edge of the "Ansu Continent" where the Kingdom of Taros was located. This land, like other continents, floated in the Karnos Sea, with nothingness all around. The Kingdom of Taros was a small kingdom on the southern edge of the continent, with a natural southern border, which was the "cliff" before them: it was, in fact, the boundary of the Ansu Continent.

Continuing south from this border was not empty; there were many huge floating islands drifting in the void beyond the southern frontier.

Scholars believed that these huge floating islands were once part of the Ansu Continent, and that the Ansu Continent and many other continents were originally connected—after the ancient evil giant "Lokmardon" broke free from his shackles, he angrily pounded the earth, shattering the ancient Kolos Continent into pieces. Since then, the originally unified Kolos became the current state of many floating continents drifting around.

Large landmasses floated relatively fixed in the Karnos Sea, while smaller fragments drifted between these continents, some becoming homes for sub-races or demons, and others becoming transportation hubs for human kingdoms.

The floating islands drifting outside the southern border of Taros belonged to the former: these islands were occupied by sub-races living outside the civilized world.

These islands had dense forests and magic-filled water sources, so the beasts living on these floating islands were not only numerous but also had undergone some changes to varying degrees. Under the influence of magic, low-level intelligent creatures such as bear demons, jackalweirds, and magic apes emerged from their beast relatives. Although their intelligence was shallow and laughable to humans, it was still enough to make them the overlords of these floating islands. Because the islands floated on the dangerous Karnos Sea, wisps of chaotic aura often stirred up storms in the void, so the high-intelligence species on the continent rarely bothered the small "kingdoms" on these floating islands. The sub-races living here lived a leisurely life for many years.

Fighting, having babies, life was quite fulfilling.

But this leisurely atmosphere was suddenly broken.

Gluglu was an old magic ape living in the forest. Although it was already three hundred and forty-five years old this year, it still knew very little about the outside world—the floating island it lived on had luckily avoided every Chaos Tide of the past three centuries. The old magic ape had seen the scene of the forest on the opposite side of the void being torn apart by storms time and time again, so it believed that the outside world was so dangerous. Any smart magic ape should not be interested in the opposite continent, even if the forest there looked denser than on the floating island, even if it seemed to have a more vast territory. It and its clansmen should stay away from it.

So it had never left its forest. In fact, it had no way to leave: apart from those who could fly, who could cross the vast void between the island and the continent?

But now it couldn't continue to follow its principles, because it had to prepare for a journey to the opposite continent.

The old magic ape sighed and lowered its head to continue fiddling with the rattan and wooden pieces, while beside it, its clansmen were doing the same thing. As one of the most skilled sub-races in the forest, the magic apes could make quite complex tools, and now this talent had become their only task every day: their job was to assemble these things into some very, very large baskets to be installed under something called a "hot air balloon."

Gluglu glanced back and saw the jackalweirds shouting random slogans while drying a pile of blue leather on racks, and in the distance, the kobolds were screaming as they piled up stones to make a huge drying oven to process the wood collected from the forest: it was said that the wood would eventually be made into the frame of the hot air balloon, or maybe into beams... who knew? A bear demon happily said a bunch of nonsense after receiving a reward from the "alpha wolf," but bear demons were notoriously stupid, and it probably didn't remember what the "alpha wolf" had said at all.

Gluglu only knew one thing, and that was that the blue leather the jackalweirds were drying used to belong to a terrible monster, a wild blue demon whale that had swam from the depths of the Karnos Sea. That massive creature that blotted out the sky could move freely in the Karnos Sea filled with various energies, and it was simply a terrifying god to the sub-races living on the floating island—but the alpha wolf had killed it after a day and night of fighting. According to a sneaky jackalweirds, the alpha wolf was sitting on the corpse of the blue demon whale, gnawing on the whale's bone marrow while tearing off its skin—the plan to make a "hot air balloon" started from there.

Therefore, Gluglu had to obey the alpha wolf's orders, even though it was extremely reluctant to leave the safe forest, and even though it had great fear of "flying across the void," it was still obediently weaving rattan, just like those jackalweirds and bear demons who had already expressed their submission.

Because it knew very well that the alpha wolf was incredibly powerful—at least more powerful than the blue demon whale.

And there was no creature on this floating island that could beat her.

So since the "alpha wolf" wanted to go to the continent occupied by humans, they could only obey.