Rosaline had left behind many letters, but on the scale of time, the intervals between them only grew longer.
In her unchanging life, Ivette's days became increasingly dull and flavorless.
She regularly went out to sea to hunt, devouring Mutated Creatures of the Second Stage and above. She often read at home—professional books as well as all sorts of miscellaneous reading. She loved sleeping on rainy days, feeling that it helped her forget all her troubles. Every so often, she would visit beneath a certain overpass to check on the few wild chickens her student had been so concerned about.
As the days and years passed in this way, only when a pivotal year arrived and she could open the next letter did a faint ripple of emotion appear in Ivette's tranquil eyes.
Yet during that same long wait, a somewhat painful answer seemed to take root in her heart.
One hundred years, then another hundred.
There was no Aurora, nor was there that familiar voice.
Until one clear morning after the rain, after reading the letter marking the two-hundredth year—the final one—Ivette turned her head and stared out the window for a long time. At last, she picked up pen and paper and decided to start writing a letter.
It was a letter to her student, as well as a message left before a long journey.
She thought that if Rosaline was still alive and had truly returned to the Land of Finale, then compared to Ish Island, she was more likely to have appeared on one of this world's three major continents because the landing point of the Remnant Abyss was uncertain.
So rather than waiting, taking a long trip to travel through the three continents would give her a far greater chance of meeting her student again.
Of course, she knew that was merely comforting herself.
According to Black Tower Pharmaceuticals' research, magical cultivation had very little effect on extending one's lifespan and was constrained by one's life form. With unchanged genes, living to one hundred and eighty was already the limit—considering Black Tower Pharmaceuticals' overwhelming lead in life-extension technology, those claims should have been highly authoritative.
But the Radiant Continent was, after all, a mid-magic or high-magic world. A world where true gods existed.
Who knew what might happen in another world?
In any case, until she saw Rosaline's gravestone with her own eyes, she would keep hoping.
That was why she wrote this letter here, lest her student suddenly return after she set off, only to find her teacher gone.
In the letter, she would tell her student about her travel route, which city ruins she would visit and leave messages in along the way. If her student saw it, she could travel backward from the final stop, allowing them to meet sooner.
She left the letter behind.
She sealed the doors and windows.
She put all the important things in the basement.
After making all the preparations, Ivette, dressed in a black dress with an Alloy Combat Blade strapped to her back, sat in the driver's seat of her Magitech Motorcycle, ready to begin her first journey around the post-apocalyptic world.
Compared to the heap of scrap metal she had used two hundred years ago, the silver-white Magitech Motorcycle she now used possessed far more mechanical beauty and was much larger. It was practically a motorhome.
Naturally, that was the result of modifications. Since she was about to begin a life of wandering, she needed somewhere to shelter from wind and rain. Otherwise, constantly sleeping in the wilderness would not only be unsafe, but would also easily dirty her clothes or attract little bugs.
Of course, she could choose not to sleep at all, but then she would get very sleepy. She was fairly tolerant of hunger, but drowsiness was another matter. Whenever conditions allowed, she still greatly enjoyed sleeping.
Half an hour later, as Ivette drove the massive Magitech Motorcycle, the size of a truck, everything outside the windows was gradually swallowed by the boundless azure sea.
Ish Island became a receding dot behind her, while waves rolled freely beneath the sunlight on the distant horizon, like schools of golden fish.
This ocean was called the Abyssal Current Sea, the great ocean west of Black Tide Continent.
On a square map, the three continents of the Origin Civilization were arranged much like a diagonal line slanting from the upper left corner to the lower right.
Black Tide Continent lay in the upper left, Emerald Continent occupied the center, and Silver Mirror Continent was in the lower right.
That made planning the journey easy. She simply had to head diagonally downward.
Soon after leaving the waters around Ish Island, underwater monsters gradually began bursting out from time to time to attack the passing motorhome. But their bodies were immediately pierced through by silver-white strands of hair, turning them into dried husks that vanished in an instant.
This was another major reason Ivette had chosen to set out on this journey—the high-level Mutants in the waters around Ish Island had already been cleaned out by her.
Although she would not go after First Stage Mutants because the effort was not worth the reward, the mana increase provided by Second Stage Mutants was still better than nothing.
So on this journey, she was looking forward to encountering more Third Stage Mutants. Only at that stage could she gain any noticeable benefit.
However, the total amount of Aberration Magic was still difficult to calculate. If First Stage Mutants were used as a unit, then she currently had roughly 40,000 points of Aberration Magic—while her Mana Points had only just surpassed 2,000.
But that comparison was obviously flawed. Aberration Magic diminished with every use, while Mana Points could be rapidly restored through meditation.
So under normal circumstances, whenever conditions allowed, she would first use spells to cripple her prey before devouring it with her tentacles, saving a great deal of Aberration Magic.
Her days adrift at sea lasted around a week.
In truth, at the motorhome's flight speed, two or three days would certainly have been enough to reach the west coast of Black Tide Continent.
But she had run into a battle between monsters midway, forcing her to make a huge detour.
One of the combatants was the Steel Sea Dragon Beast Ivette had once witnessed with her own eyes.
The other was a purplish-red jellyfish as enormous as a mountain range. Its bell was covered in the outlines of agonized human faces, and it primarily attacked with its tentacles. Ivette named it the Nightmare Tentacle Spirit.
While watching from afar, Ivette had once wondered whether these two giant Mutants were simply large in size but not particularly evolved.
But when she saw them fighting with all kinds of mysterious spells that could not be analyzed, she became certain that these giant Mutants possessed an exceptionally high degree of evolution—at least higher than the Third Stage.
Especially the pulsed beams fired from the Steel Sea Dragon Beast's mouth. She even suspected they could blast an entire mountain peak apart.
In short, they were far beyond anything she could challenge at present. So she decisively chose to go around them, only reaching the west coast of Black Tide Continent a week later after getting hopelessly lost, where she finally landed with difficulty.
By the time she arrived on the first day, dusk was already approaching.
Ivette parked the motorhome on the beach and slept for the night. Early the next morning, she followed a pre-apocalypse map in her hand toward the nearest major city belonging to the New Eden Commonwealth.
Her destination was called Agasha. Before the apocalypse, it had been a metropolis in no way inferior to Ish City, and its level of development ranked among the best in the entire New Eden Commonwealth.
She planned to wander around the city, take in the sights, scavenge some junk, and then leave some traces in the city center.
Since flight mode consumed five or six times as much energy as normal mode, she drove on the ground using all four wheels to save energy and make the journey feel more like a journey. Wherever she passed, the wheels kicked up billowing dust and sent dirt and stones flying.
Several hours passed. Just as more ruined buildings began appearing ahead and she was nearing the city ruins, Ivette suddenly saw a figure emerge from one of the ruined buildings by the roadside. The figure stood beside the abandoned highway in the distance, waiting for her to drive closer.
Ivette froze. She had considered whether she might encounter other living people on the continent—whether survivors or travelers from another world, she did not care.
But meeting one on her second day here was far too soon.
Then, through the glass, she made out the other person's appearance.
At first glance, she appeared to be a human girl dressed in explorer's gear and carrying a flashlight, with the air of an adventurer. But upon closer inspection, her eyes differed subtly from those of a human, clear circular seams were visible at her arm joints, and the texture and sheen of her skin did not quite resemble human skin.
—She was actually a Mechanical Puppet.
"Hello, kind miss."
After Ivette stopped the vehicle, the puppet girl spoke in an emotionless yet courteous tone. "I am a traveler from Silver Mirror Continent. My vehicle has run out of energy and cannot be started. Sorry for the trouble, but could you give me a ride to the nearest sanctuary?"
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