"But the fact that you asked that question tells me something," Oden said, changing tack with a hint of disdain. "Your understanding of the Sea of Knowledge is still barely past the threshold. You're at the very beginning."
"Huh? Really? I thought I knew a fair bit about the Sea of Knowledge." Lu Yuan's interest was piqued.
"After all our exploration back then, we divided the Sea of Knowledge into three regions. Of course, those are our own divisions, not any kind of official classification. We called them the Radiant Zone, the Deep Zone, and the Unknown Zone."
"The Radiant Zone is the region people encounter most often. It's that dazzling, multicolored expanse you see first every time you enter. That's where the name comes from."
"Humanity has only ever reached its shallows. Countless waters formed from knowledge fill it, and countless strange creatures roam there. One example is the Worm of Knowledge you're connected to. There are ruins there too, and remains."
"Remains?" Lu Yuan remembered the enormous corpse he had seen during the second Sea of Knowledge Fishing Project.
"People who died there seeking a chance to survive, people who died fishing for knowledge—their remains all lie in the Radiant Zone. Some buildings swallowed by the Sea of Knowledge are there as well."
"The Deep Zone lies farther in," Oden said, his voice dropping. "Few who went there came back alive. I was one of them."
"As for the Unknown Zone, it's a place no one has visited—or rather, everyone who reached it died. So no one knows what's there. No one can say. 'Unknown Zone' is simply a name we gave it."
As he listened to Oden, Lu Yuan thought back over his visits to the Sea of Knowledge. The scenes before him really had not been