More than ten years after the Sea Roar Research Institute had drawn the attention of the academic world in the Wasteland, another major event finally took its place.
With the combined efforts of dozens of academies of science and the painstaking dedication of tens of thousands of senior scholars, the third-generation Space-Time Fortress of the Human Academic Circle was finally completed. It incorporated the Tidal Civilization's ultra-pure-water protective-shield technology and part of the Black Death Civilization's space-time-jump technology, and could jump through curvature spacetime's shallow gray layer.
It should have been a momentous occasion, worthy of a resounding celebration—perhaps even one of the historic milestones of the Wasteland's academic world.
But the project had been delayed by more than ten years. That might not mean much to a civilization, or even to a senior scholar. But with billions upon billions of lives at risk of being struck at any moment by another civilization, and the two sides locked in a zero-sum struggle to the death, all sorts of things could happen.
So the expedition team, which had been waiting for a long time, left the Wasteland at the first opportunity.
They would travel aboard this space-time cruiser to the Death Storm's dark zone, a hundred and fifty Starveil units away, as quickly as possible. Such a distance was far beyond the Academic World's range of statistical observation. Even without Night's Veil Land in the way, and with no curvature spacetime technology to help, an individual would likely spend an entire lifetime trying to cross the perilous expanse of the Death Storm and still fail.
Just three months later,
the scholars' Flying Devices emerged from Curvature Space and stopped briefly near the Death Storm vortex they had stumbled upon.
Clearly, some higher civilization's space-time platform had passed by and casually destroyed