A few days later.
Compared with the ever-present, inexplicable dangers deep beneath the ocean—a place utterly unfamiliar to the continent's biological civilizations—monotony and boredom had been the norm for Bailan these past years.
Like the boundless Death Desert, the ocean was another barren, hostile desert of death.
She had begun to miss life at the Academy more and more, and the Death Storms that swept across the continent, carrying clouds of dust.
Bailan was certainly no sentimental person. As the sole direct disciple of Reilo, the famed scholar of the Wasteland, she possessed a firm resolve. Even after spending three years aboard a Flying Device with an interior diameter of only two meters, she had never forgotten her mission.
Whoosh.
The Flying Device, running on conventional power, skimmed low over the sea, searching for a possible habitat of the Tidal Civilization like a needle in a haystack.
Crackle, crackle, crackle...
The Thunderstorm ahead spanned tens of thousands of kilometers of ocean. In the damp, salty sea breeze, lightning and thunder raged without pause inside the dark clouds.
The Flying Device stopped outside the storm.
Inside, Bailan stared silently, her expression grave, at the abnormal weather system—a disaster far more intense than any thunderstorm on the continent.
Unless she transformed the Flying Device into its Curvature Spacetime-jump form and plunged in, even the ultra-pure-water shield would likely struggle to withstand such a powerful, dense barrage of lightning. The craft could be destroyed again.
By her estimate, even the lightning at the storm's outer edge was probably between 600 and 1,200 degrees, depending on its form. For the life forms ordinarily known to the Academic World, this was undoubtedly a life-forbidden zone, absolutely unfit for survival.
But...
"What if the Tidal Civilization happened to originate in this very disaster? Perhaps the disaster