"Look! Once we cross that strange low hill ahead, we'll have passed through the buffer zone. That means one foot will officially be stepping into the inviolable imperial territory of the Fate Pendulum!"
Half a month later.
On a day when the weather was oppressively stifling, the skies so gloomy that a torrential downpour seemed ready to fall at any moment.
Two figures clad in dark robes sped through the air a hundred meters above the ground against the fierce wind, producing a shrill sound as the airflow tore apart.
A flock of noisy black ravens was startled into flight by the gale and flapped past beneath Jason's feet in panic.
He suddenly turned around and roared excitedly at Dago behind him against the wind.
Dago nodded slightly and looked as far as he could in the direction Jason was pointing.
At the end of his vision, beyond a low mountain range covered in gray-black pine trees, vast patches of eerie blue fluorescence faintly shone through.
When they streaked over that low hill like meteors, their view suddenly opened up.
Dago's breathing caught slightly.
He saw that on the wasteland not far ahead, there lay a winding, endless glowing Blue River!
This dazzling river of stars was like a colossal sword left behind by a god, brutally cleaving the dead, ash-gray land into two distinctly separate worlds, east and west!
Only after drawing very near did Dago realize in shock that it was not a real river at all.
It was a Miracle formed by the frenzied aggregation of a special magical fungus strain that had been artificially propagated and mutated to an extreme degree.
In even slightly dim surroundings, these fungal strains would uncontrollably emit an illusionary blue glow.
They carpeted the earth like a thick blanket, forming an