Inside the sea monster outpost monitoring the Azure Network, the soldiers on duty ran out of their rooms and gathered curiously around the Black Cubes that had just been salvaged. One sea monster with neat short silver-white hair poked a recently extinguished black cube, still faintly warm on its surface, with her trident, then turned and poked the smug-looking Coroline with her tail tip. Her voice was full of envy. "You're amazing. Three out of the four cubes were salvaged by you..."
Coroline proudly raised her chin and tail. "Of course. My drop rate is insanely high!"
"No idea what these things are even for," another sea monster muttered after circling all the cubes and returning with her chin in hand. "The last time, several Witches sent by the queen scanned these cubes with a whole bunch of equipment and left. Who knows if they've figured anything out these past two days..."
"They definitely couldn't have reached a conclusion that quickly," Vera said, shaking her head. "But I heard the queen takes this matter very seriously. She contacted our Land Allies that very day—and the allies didn't know what these things were either."
"But someone is definitely up to something," Coroline said solemnly, carrying her trident over her shoulder and nodding. "These square things couldn't possibly have grown out of the Azure Network on their own. Somebody must have thrown them in there..."
The sea monsters around her immediately voiced their agreement.
Only Vera frowned slightly, as though she had thought of something she could not understand. "But why didn't the Witches simply take these cubes back for study? Why travel all the way from Antavien to the Boundless Sea to collect data? They even specifically told us to keep these cubes right here at the outpost and not bring