After the tidal surge contamination leaked, the first thing affected might not have been the Sentinel System, but the Firmament Station in synchronous orbit—this was a sudden, extraordinarily bold conjecture that had occurred to Gawain, yet it was not without basis.
In fact, this was the point he had never been able to figure out: the tower imprisoning the tidal surge's main body was located in the real world. Judging from the "connections" between the facilities left behind by the Voyagers, if the tidal surge wanted to seep outward and escape, its most convenient route should have been the equally unguarded Firmament Station in the real world. So why had its power ultimately flowed toward the "Sentinels" in the domain of the gods?
The entire Sentinel System lay in the "Deep Realm" beneath the sea, separated from the real world by dimensional barriers that included the Umbral Realm and Shadow Realm. It was also bound by the Eternal Agreement left behind by the Voyagers and could not leave its post at all. No matter how one looked at it, for the tidal surge's power to pass through all those barriers and contaminate the Sentinel System was a thankless task. Why had it chosen that route?
The tidal surge was indeed a mad ancient god whose actions followed no rational logic, but even so, it possessed the most basic instincts, and there was ample evidence from many sources to support that. Since it acted on instinct, then that meant... it should have instinctively chosen the most convenient path to escape and spread toward the Firmament Station...
And now, the answer to this most unreasonable matter had finally appeared—the tidal surge had indeed initially spread toward the Firmament Station, but it had been stopped. That was why it had been forced to