The Void, Ataha, Ashen Bastion.
The sky was gloomy, with paper-ash-like matter drifting everywhere. The land was barren and severely desertified.
A wooden cross stood abruptly in the ground. Several half-mechanical vultures perched on it, their pairs of brown eyes scanning the surroundings for any relatively normal living creatures.
This was Ataha, a notorious lawless land in the Void. The major races, such as the Demon Clan, the Winged Clan, and the Arcane Eternal Star, were all unable to govern it.
Ataha was absolute freedom and chaos. Only two kinds of people could survive here: scavengers so poor they sold their own vitality, and vicious criminals in exile.
There was no unified race here. Criminals of every race gathered here, which was why more people called it the Land of Exile.
The ground was a danger zone. Without protective equipment, one would go into shock within ten minutes, followed by mechanical infection. The bones mutated first. All the iron in the body would converge toward a certain point, a process that was excruciatingly painful. Even more terrifyingly, the infected would not die. Instead, they would continue to cling to life, consuming large amounts of mutated plants with excessive iron content and industrial waste until the infected area of the body became mechanized.
Ripples of space emerged, and a figure in a white mage robe stepped out from the spatial waves.
"Welcome, madam from the Arcane Eternal Star."
A man whose body was mostly mechanized bowed. His smile was extremely fake, and his gaze was unique to criminals—the gaze of someone who might not have a tomorrow after today.
"Lead the way."
The woman in the white mage robe spoke. The bowing criminal's smile grew even more insincere. He turned and walked into an underground passage. The passage was built entirely