As the Snake King's corpse sank beneath the water and vanished from sight, Ivette let out a long breath, feeling as though a weight had finally been lifted from her heart.
Of course, killing the Snake King did not make any equipment drop, but she had always regarded it as the greatest obstacle preventing her from leaving Crater Lake.
Now that obstacle was gone, her path to freedom had instantly become smooth sailing.
Moreover, decades ago, her magical pressure had already reached the required level for charging magic devices, and she had repaired a still-functional Flying Board from the heaps of scrap.
Remember the launch site domain
So long as she wished, she could set off right now and leave this lake prison that had trapped her for nearly two hundred years.
But...
After some thought, Ivette still turned around and returned to the facility.
On one hand, she needed to review the gains from this operation and further improve Wrath of Thunder.
On the other hand, since she could leave whenever she wanted, why rush?
A little more preparation would not hurt!
In the decades after the giant snake's fall, the waters centered around the ruined platform became noticeably quieter. Whenever Ivette appeared beneath the sun, whether meditating or practicing magic, the Mutated Creatures in the shallows wisely kept their distance.
These low-intelligence creatures seemed to have decided through some primal instinct that the slender figure had replaced the giant snake as the new ruler of this place.
Of course, challengers occasionally appeared.
Compared to ordinary mutants, these challengers had far less exposed flesh and possessed unique offensive organs, such as chitinous shells or electrified tentacles, fully demonstrating the diversity of life.
But for Ivette, they were all one Wrath of Thunder away from being dealt with.
—The improved version of Wrath of Thunder had reduced its mana cost from 240 points to just 100, while retaining sixty percent of its power. It was an optimization she was quite proud of.
Worth mentioning was that her Mana Points had recently approached the five-hundred-point mark.
During the era of the Origin Civilization, even the energy core used by a fully automated two-meter-tall magic mech only had that level of capacity.
So, in that respect, after over two hundred years of solitary cultivation, Ivette's Mana Points could already be considered quite abundant. And Wrath of Thunder, her strongest original spell, truly was built to military-grade specifications.
"With my current combat strength, I would have counted as an expert even before the apocalypse. Supplies and weapons must be scarce in this apocalyptic era... Hmm, that seems to imply that once I escape Five Finger Mountain, I'll immediately become one of humanity's greatest assets..."
Carrying such small expectations, Ivette cultivated with even greater motivation, as though she could already see herself descending like a heavenly soldier, saving a collapsing world and turning back the tide, then earning the admiration of countless people while beautiful women threw themselves at her.
Until that day finally arrived.
On a mist-shrouded morning, Ivette stood silently for a long time before the sealed metal door leading to the eleventh underground level, then shook her head helplessly.
After breaking through the five-hundred-point threshold in Mana Points the previous night, she had decided to leave. She had no luggage to bring and no particular attachments to abandon. Her only regret was that, before departing, she still had not managed to open this sturdy alloy door, whose material she could not identify.
"Fine. Stay shut if you want."
Leaving those words behind, Ivette headed up the stairs. The sound of her heels striking the metal steps echoed layer upon layer through the empty shaft.
Over the long span of more than two hundred years, she had walked up and down the ruins of Abyss Base countless times, as if every bolt had been carved into her memory. Though she had once regarded this place as a boundless prison, there were times when she felt it could barely count as a shelter from the storm, granting her brief peace and quiet in an apocalyptic world overrun by mutated monsters.
And now, she would finally draw an end to those long years of captivity with her own hands.
Standing on the Water Platform, Ivette activated the Flying Board.
As a simply constructed magical vehicle, its energy storage panel was surprisingly impressive. It could store one hundred points of mana and support a range of roughly fifty kilometers.
By comparison, even with her five hundred Mana Points and the help of her beloved Wind Control, Ivette could only fly one kilometer. The difference was immediately obvious.
Still, Ivette found that unsurprising. She knew very well that, as one of the technological crystallizations of the Origin Civilization, this thing looked ordinary, but its magical circuits contained at least a million runes.
Comparing Wind Control to this thing was about the same as using an abacus to challenge a quantum computer.
She stretched out her hand, and a transparent handle formed from mana took shape in her palm. With a slight forward lean, the Flying Board immediately carried her forward, carving a fleeting trail across the dark blue water.
Wherever she passed, the Mutated Creatures in the lake and shallows retreated in panic, yielding a path for this visitor from the sky from far away.
Thus, in less than three minutes, she crossed the stretch of water that was under three kilometers long and arrived before the smooth cliff face she had once gazed upon when she first came here more than two hundred years ago.
Because of the height restriction, she could not continue using the Flying Board here. Ivette lightly leaped onto a protruding rock, stowed the Flying Board at her waist, and let pale cyan currents of air coil around her body, carrying her soaring up the cliff face.
When her fingertips finally reached the highest point of the crater, the entire world suddenly opened up before her.
The azure sea merged with clouds and rosy skies at the horizon. Along the coastline, vine-entwined skyscrapers had become one with the forest, like towering ancient trees. On the nearby foothills, a sea of trees swayed, stirred by the mountain wind into emerald waves.
She instinctively looked back in the direction she had come from. From this vantage point, Crater Lake, once vast as an ocean, was no more than a clear pool, while the metal platform at its center looked as small as a toy floating in a bathtub.
So this was the world after the apocalypse... she thought, standing there silently for a long time, until the fierce wind atop the mountain lifted her silver-white hair, making it shimmer with tiny rainbows beneath the sunlight.
What was she supposed to do after escaping?
Ivette had considered that question as early as two hundred years ago, but she had been unable to give an answer. After all, she did not know what sort of sight would greet her after leaving. Would it be a barren wasteland devoid of people, or a hellscape crawling with mutants?
Would there be gathered human survivors, fighting to survive and rebuild their homes, singing an anthem called courage?
For now, the answer appeared to be no.
Following a highway whose original path could still be made out, Ivette entered Ish City, the capital of Ish Island.
Compared to the island's other two human cities, which had become ruins, the scenery here was far more spectacular. After all, this had been the location of an important branch of Black Tower Pharmaceuticals. Even from dozens of kilometers away, she could still see the pitch-black tower rising into the sky at the city center.
It was painted in lush green, like an ancient sword wrapped in vines. Even though its master had been dead for many years, it still stood unwavering, pointing straight toward the heavens.
This was humanity's sword, and also the gravestone of human civilization... Gazing at the ruined landscape before her, Ivette seemed to cross through time and see Ish City's former prosperity and splendor—centered around the Black Tower Building, rows of skyscrapers stood all around, holographic advertisements flowed across glass curtain walls, aircraft swarmed through the air like bees, and neon lights dyed the night sky into a dreamlike illusion... But now, it had all vanished like smoke.
Leaping over a clear underground river formed by a collapsed sewer, she passed through streets blooming with wisteria. Along the way, Ivette moved through the streets and alleys like a ghost.
Butterflies landed on her shoulder before fluttering away, while deer raised their heads warily beside collapsed storefronts. Mutated Creatures occasionally lunged from the shadows, only to become charred husks in Flame Dance.
In this way, she strolled through countless perilous streets and reached the city center, finding neither cooking smoke, footprints, nor any traces of human activity along the way.
Then, in the plaza, as she looked up at Black Tower's weathered outer walls, she finally confirmed one thing: at least on this island, there was no longer a second living human besides herself.
In fact, even if she looked beyond Ish Island to the three major continents of Origin Star—Black Tide Continent, Emerald Continent, and Silver Mirror Continent—there were probably few, if any, other survivors left.
Otherwise, it was impossible to explain how, after nearly six hundred years, humanity had still failed to rebuild its civilization despite its technology and wisdom.
Struck by that realization, she sighed softly. As a traveler from another world, she had thought that once she walked out of her prison, a brand-new world would await her—where she could meet all kinds of people and experience entirely different customs and cultures. Yet she had never expected that loneliness would still be her only companion along the endless road, until countless eons passed, until Morning Star itself went dark.
If that was the case...
Then!
Why not start by farming?