Three Days Later

Two days later.

Four tiny figures walked through the wind and sand.

In the Alpha Death Storm, under the unrivaled force of nature that shattered the laws of reality, even Flagi, the Great Warlock King, had no desire to resist needlessly. He pressed on quietly.

As he walked, Reilo carefully reread the journal Shangelieluofu had given him.

It was a relic left behind by a powerful Wind Spirit.

The Wind Spirit script in the journal had been written with wind energy on paper made from dragonfly wings. The letters wriggled slowly like tadpoles. They were neither pictographs nor alphabetic characters, but musical symbols—or, more accurately, codes that conveyed states of mind. To imagine and understand them, one first had to absorb the spiritual influence of Wind Spirit society.

And so...

With the destruction of the Wind Spirit race, even if other creatures discovered the civilization's buried ruins in the future, it would be difficult for them to understand the information it had left behind.

But none of that had anything to do with Reilo anymore.

Over tens of thousands of years, who knew how many civilizations had vanished beneath the endless desert? As one of humanity's protectors—or, perhaps, one of its destroyers—Reilo was a rational, dispassionate scholar. He would never, like the Holy See's clergy, offer hypocritical prayers after a civilization had been destroyed.

He was more interested in the "Essence Spring" mentioned in the journal.

After a long while, Reilo silently put the journal away.

This was the fourth time he had read it since Shangelieluofu had given him the journal and pointed him to its contents.

"Steal it? When stealing from it and drinking it, you have to be quiet. You can't let anyone discover you, or your body will explode in an instant..."

Reilo murmured thoughtfully.

A