Silent, yet brimming with hope.
Five full epochs had passed since Green left the civilizational battlefield between the Wizard Alliance and the Metal Destroyer. He had been trapped within the Dimensional Esophagus for that long—and if all the truly idle time were added together, it would be even longer.
Fifty thousand years.
During the first ten thousand years, Green could still say he had spent them in the most ideal sort of fulfillment. Yet the last three epochs at the Penetrating Gate Gathering Place had been a dull, flavorless ordeal. Even after trying every tedious experiment imaginable, he could not squander such an immense stretch of time. Even Medusa, a level-six lifeform, had withered away and died before his eyes.
As for this final epoch at the Hope Coffin Gathering Place, it had been prolonged torture, tormenting Green's body and mind until they nearly became pathological, making him fully experience the terror of being irreversibly digested by the Endless World!
If he could not escape the Dimensional Esophagus, then everything Green had achieved within it would be utterly meaningless. Instead, it would become some deep-layered illusory treasure in the eyes of later explorers.
Over these five epochs...
It was as though Green had undergone a cruel, monotonous journey through the real world, while the Wizard World had become a dreamlike memory of a distant, colorful childhood—nothing more than an ideal pursued by instinct, a hope lodged in his heart.
However!
Just when Green believed he could no longer endure, just when he intended, after this Coffin Ascender challenge ended, to face three opponents alone and attempt an escape from the Dimensional Esophagus with the Hope Scepter, a turning point arrived!
Staring at the several-thousand-meter severed blade-arm before him, Green's tricolored eyes shone with inexpressible delight.
Within that severed blade-arm, an