Just Saying It Once: The Plot Is About to Accelerate! Made in Heaven!

Nine in the morning.

After logging out of the projection, Silver Wolf emerged from her room with her hair still a little messy. Rubbing her eyes, she slowly wandered into the dining room.

The breakfast on the table had already been mostly cleared away. Only the portion specifically left for her remained: warm milk, two slices of toast, a fried egg, and diced apples and oranges, covered by an insulated dome.

Silver Wolf paused. "This is for me?"

Kawaba Mutsumi sat across from her, having already finished her own breakfast. She nodded. "Mm."

Silver Wolf walked over and lifted the cover. The fried egg was still warm. She picked up a slice of toast and took a bite, then raised the milk and took a small sip. "Not bad."

Kawaba Mutsumi looked at her. "What time did you go to sleep last night?"

Chewing her toast, Silver Wolf answered vaguely, "No idea."

"..." Kawaba Mutsumi looked at her helplessly. "You stayed up again?"

Silver Wolf shook her head. "No such thing." After a pause, she added, "The night was staying up on me."

"?"

Kawaba Mutsumi looked at Silver Wolf in confusion.

Silver Wolf looked up at her, then took another bite of her fried egg. "Thanks for worrying, but I didn't eat ChocoLuxe. I won't suddenly drop dead."

Kawaba Mutsumi couldn't hold back a laugh. "You really are..."

She didn't continue, merely watching Silver Wolf eat at her leisurely pace.

Silver Wolf wasn't a fast eater.

Unlike her focused movements in games, she looked rather lazy right now. She took two bites of toast, a sip of milk, and occasionally poked at the fruit with her fork.

Kawaba Mutsumi didn't rush her either. The two simply sat there in silence.

Sunlight had completely filled the dining room outside the window.

Halfway through eating, Silver Wolf suddenly looked up. "Mutsumi, are you just sitting here waiting for me?"

"Mm."

"Where's your sister?"

Kawaba Mutsumi pointed at the empty plate.

"She left after finishing breakfast."

Silver Wolf nodded. "I see."

"I want to go with you later." Kawaba Mutsumi picked up her phone again and casually scrolled through it.

Silver Wolf continued eating her breakfast. "Sure."

After Silver Wolf drank the last mouthful of milk, she set the cup back on the table.

"Done."

Kawaba Mutsumi looked up. "Finished?"

"Mm."

Silver Wolf stood up and casually pushed her plate forward.

"Let's go."

Kawaba Mutsumi nodded. "Then let's log in. Where are we meeting?"

"Obviously, Elena's tribe. The next part of the story goes back to Sen Yue."

Silver Wolf gave the puzzled Kawaba Mutsumi a mysterious smile.

In the end, Ye Yu pushed Kawaba Mutsumi back to her bedroom.

Silver Wolf returned to her own room.

The door gently closed.

The next moment, silver-blue streams of data lit up the room.

-Game World-

Silver Wolf was already sitting on a thick branch high up in the Emerald Giant Forest.

Leaning against the trunk with bubble gum in her mouth, she waited for the others to log in while pulling up her panel again.

She checked her panel once more.

[Cartridge Remaining Time: 21s]

Silver Wolf looked at the timer. She remembered that this was the Forest Moon God's blessing, left to her before Sen Yue fell completely dormant.

That was the issue.

The power of Level 999... Could a normal planetary deity really grant something like that?

She recalled the Forest Moon God's condition at the time: an empty voice, Abyssal corruption, a polluted World Tree, and even the moon split in two.

Yet even under those circumstances, the Forest Moon God had still left her with the power to borrow the LV999 Cartridge.

A false moon and a true moon. A divided world. Silver Wolf rubbed her temples. "Why does this feel more troublesome the deeper I investigate?"

She took out the Ace of Spades. The card slowly spun between her fingers, its black pattern quietly reflecting in the sunlight.

Silver Wolf stared at it for quite a while. "Just what are you for? Don't tell me you only helped raise my level a bit?"

The card that had previously served as a nail planted by the Abyss had now been forced clean by Silver Wolf. Only the purest Elation remained within it.

"Seriously." She pinched the card between two fingers. "I was only tracking down a mole, but one thing after another keeps popping out."

"Even Aeons are getting involved..." Silver Wolf thought about it, then suddenly felt there was nothing strange about it.

"Right," she said, biting her bubble gum until it popped. "I got dragged into this too, after all."

Once Silver Wolf truly couldn't figure out what the card was for, she put it away again.

Just then, a familiar voice came from below.

Windchaser raised her head and shouted, "Wolf Venerable, stop staying up there! Come down!"

Silver Wolf glanced down. Beneath the tree, the three others had already regrouped.

Windchaser was waving at her.

Sunken Crow leaned against the nearby trunk with his arms folded, silently watching her.

Vernacular Poet stretched, rolling his shoulders and neck. "I slept so long that I still feel kind of dazed."

Silver Wolf gave a light leap, dropping from the thick branch. Her toes touched down without raising so much as a speck of dust.

"You're here? Today's mission is simple. We're going to the moon."

"What?" Vernacular Poet suddenly twitched, then quickly moved closer to Silver Wolf. "Why are we suddenly going to the moon?"

Windchaser completely failed to keep up with Silver Wolf's pace. She could only scratch her head. "Weren't we investigating the mole before?"

Sunken Crow added coldly, "Going to the moon?"

Silver Wolf clapped her hands. "I'll say it again. The plot is about to accelerate!"

"Made in heaven!"

"Snap!"

Silver-blue streams of data erupted from beneath the four of them.

Space seemed to be directly folded by an invisible hand.

The next second.

All four figures vanished at once.

The instant after.

The Emerald Giant Forest was no longer beneath their feet.

A silver-white wasteland stretched to the edge of their vision.

There were no trees, no rainforest, no insect calls.

Only a nearly lifeless expanse of gray-white.

Silver Wolf was the first to land.

Her shoes stepped onto the hard lunar soil with a faint, muffled sound.

She looked down.

The dust on the moon's surface was finer than she had expected. It left shallow footprints when stepped on, yet no plants could possibly grow from those cracks.

She raised her head.

In the distance, an enormous arc stretched across the sky.

It wasn't a mountain.

It was the lunar horizon.

With no reference points around them, its curvature became even more obvious, as if the entire world were being held in space by an invisible hand.

Silver Wolf turned around.

The other three were completely stunned.

"Welcome to the moon."

Vernacular Poet opened his mouth. He looked down at his shoes, then back up at the surroundings. In the end, he only managed to squeeze out one sentence. "Holy shit... Never thought my first time coming here would be like this."

Windchaser reacted completely differently. She had already jumped, slowly floating upward in the low gravity, as though something were holding her aloft.

"Whoa—! So light!" She excitedly flipped over in midair.

Sunken Crow raised a hand to touch his throat. "Why can we hear sounds?"

Silver Wolf shot him a glance. "Remember the communicator? I set it to stay on for you guys."

Sunken Crow pointed at his nose again. "Then why can we still breathe?"

Silver Wolf looked at him. "Why do you have so many questions?"

Vernacular Poet immediately joined in, seemingly delighted by the chance to bully his buddy. "Yeah, just treat it as a game setting."

Sunken Crow rolled his eyes at Vernacular Poet.

Windchaser slowly fell back to the ground. The instant her feet touched the lunar soil, a large cloud of gray-white dust billowed up.

"Cough, cough!" She waved a hand to disperse the dust in front of her. "How about we find somewhere else to stand?"

Silver Wolf glanced at her. "Fine."

The silver-blue wings of light behind her unfurled again. "I'll check what's nearby first."

Her light wings fluttered gently.

Silver Wolf rose into the air. As her altitude increased, her field of view rapidly expanded.

The lunar wasteland, meteor craters, broken ridges, and a massive fissure cutting across the land gradually came into view.

That fissure was incredibly long, as if someone had once cleaved the entire moon in two with some enormous weapon.

Silver Wolf's expression grew a little more serious. She zoomed in with her visor. There were no signs of natural collapse along the fissure's edge; the cut was extremely clean.

Phanes sure has some strength.

On the other side of the fissure was an unusual patch of green.

Silver Wolf narrowed her eyes. "Hm?"

She adjusted her view. There was a tree there.

A lone tree growing on the lunar surface. It wasn't tall.

It couldn't even be considered huge, but amid the endless gray-white wasteland, it was far too conspicuous.

Its crown was a pale silver-green, with tiny specks of light constantly falling from among its branches and leaves.

And around the tree, there was actually a city.

Or rather, a town built around that tree.

"Over there." She pointed into the distance. "There's something."

Windchaser immediately looked up. "What?"

"A tree."

"There's a tree on the moon?"

Silver Wolf looked at the town again.

Through her visor, life signs were moving one after another.

[World Tree]

"Oh? A main base." Silver Wolf didn't linger any longer. "Let's go."

The four headed toward the town. There were no roads on the moon in any true sense.

They could only travel along the gentler terrain between meteor craters.

Windchaser didn't stay still for a moment along the way. She squatted down to touch the lunar soil, stepped into a shallow pit, then tried jumping. "The footing here feels so weird."

She jumped again, this time flying several meters away. "Whoa—!"

Vernacular Poet reminded her from behind, "Don't jump too far."

"Got it."

Windchaser agreed quickly enough.

The next second, she jumped another dozen meters away.

Sunken Crow: "..."

Vernacular Poet rubbed his brow. "She's already treating the moon like a trampoline."

Silver Wolf chewed her bubble gum. "Let her have fun."

The four continued onward.

They drew closer and closer to the city.

Silver Wolf gradually got a clearer look at the town.

They weren't modern buildings.

The houses were built from gray-white stone, their rooftops covered in some kind of translucent silver crystal.

Pale moon-white lamp posts stood along both sides of the streets, and robed figures occasionally passed between the buildings.

They were all natives.

At the center of the town, the silver-green tree stood quietly, its canopy covering a vast area.

Beneath the tree was a damaged statue. Its face could no longer be made out.

Only its hand remained intact, and in its palm, it seemed to be holding something.

Silver Wolf stopped walking, her visor faintly glowing. "Wait."

She looked at the statue. "What's that?"