Floating City, Exploration

The Kogas Rift stretched across the northern edge of the former Zhen Dan Empire, like a wound cleaved by a giant blade. It ran nearly a thousand miles from east to west.

According to rumor, its deepest point plunged farther down than Maya Mountain rose.

More than six hundred years after the fall of the Zhen Dan Empire, the land had long since become unfit for any living creature.

In this place known as the Forbidden Zone of Life, the air was perpetually thick with gray-white dust that ate away at flesh and magic.

Even the ground retained the strange radiation left by the meteor catastrophe, undiminished after centuries.

Near the edge of the rift, a layer of dark green, mosslike crystals coated the rock. They showed no luster in sunlight, but when swept by a magical detection spell, they gave off a brief, faint glow.

Tap, tap!

Manny Copperfield, dressed in white mage robes, stood before the temporary camp at the rift's edge and lightly tapped the dark green crystalline ground beneath his feet with his staff.

Crack!

At his movement, an earthen-yellow surge of magic burst from the base of his staff and swiftly drove away the corrosive power gathered nearby, keeping it from penetrating even an inch.

Hummm!

Meanwhile, not far ahead, a steady rumble accompanied loads of gray crystals as magical mine carts hauled them out from the drilling platform.

The commotion made this Forbidden Zone of Life, a place no one had reached in centuries, unusually lively today.

"Teacher, we've been digging here for almost two months. We're nearly thirty kilometers down, and we still haven't found the entrance John Maslow told us about."

Jonathan Joestar, Manny's disciple, stood nearby, his face and clothes covered in dust. Holding a live excavation monitor, he frowned at