First, some geography: the Tower of Final Stars was the lab of the Elven Sorcerer Emperor, King Yumira, a needle of starlight thrust through a sea of trees.

It sits in the southwest, inside the Elven realm of Layered Woods, where leaves whisper like green waves.

The nearest human nation is the Azure Wind Kingdom, Beatrice, its banners fluttering like bright kites in a high breeze.

In the old timeline, I’d be besieging the Azure Wind Kingdom now, boots knowing this road like a well-worn path.

The tower drew notice when the Elven Saint, Ibera, felt the earth shiver like a sleeping beast, and the tremor’s heart pulsed under the tower.

The elves meant to scout it alone, bows and braids moving like a river through ferns.

But when they reached it, the tower held no water, earth, fire, or wind—only inert Golden Age mana, like amber resin set in stone.

Put simply, elves ride living elements like stallions, while Golden Age mana is a clockwork beast, precise, tamed, and cold.

It felt like a totem drum meeting a smokestack—wild song choking on iron breath.

So they posted the job to the Adventurers’ Guild, leaves carrying rumors like drifting notes.

Adventurers combed the ground floors and found nothing, because the true base was hidden, a buried tower sealed by the Sorcerer Emperor like a locked tomb.

Deep below, the Sky-Bearer strained against chains, a mountain lifting its shoulders, and no one heard.

Ibera stayed uneasy, a bird tapping a window in restless dusk, yet truth hid behind glass.

Nothing broke—until late in the Silver Era, when the Sky-Bearer Beozlev burst free and was felled by the rampaging Andreas, like lightning cutting an oak.

He wrestled for millennia, then died in one stroke, a storm strangled in its first scream.

Think of Beozlev—pitiful, a boulder weathered to dust the moment sunlight touched it.

Not our problem, though; our job is to explore the Tower of Final Stars, a spine in the forest.

The lower tower is sealed by the Sorcerer Emperor; we can’t enter, like swimmers blocked by black ice.

Head gave a method to unseal it; that part’s for Vega and Berenz, and I won’t lose sleep over their gears.

We met the hill giants in the woods, bark and breath thick as winter, and now we reach the tower gate.

Even stepping inside isn’t easy, like crossing a pond that stares back.

A Bog Fiend waits at the door, patient as an old hound for its master, yet it’s stood alone for countless years.

We watch from as far as we can, eyes like arrows, bodies pressed to rain-dark earth.

“A Bog Fiend. It’s big, sure, but each of us could solo it, right? Why plan so much?”

Stini grumbles, mud streaking her armor like bruises, and last night’s polish dies under the rain.

I’ve learned this: the captain fires up spirits, while the vice-captain patches holes like stitching a torn sail.

“If it were only size, fine. This one’s likely a Golden Age relic—look at that stone-skin like carved gargoyle tech.”

“That tech’s supposed to be lost, right?”

“Raven, you study this stuff? You know the Golden Age had no monsters, like a museum with silent halls.”

“True. Bog Fiends are a Silver Era breed, born when the Ocean of Darkness invaded like black tide. But if you’re right…”

“It doesn’t add up? Exactly. Monsters aren’t invented by the Ocean; it adds ‘order’ and ‘rules’ to what exists, like ice forming around reeds.

So what do you think it copied?”

“You mean the Bog Fiend’s prototype is…”

“Yeah, that thing—Sorcerer Emperor’s gate-beast, modded, remodded, and madly overhauled into the Bog Fiend Mk. I.

Don’t judge it by monster ecology class, or you’ll drown.”

“Don’t make it sound like a gag Construct comic! I only love humanoid Constructs!”

Even in the Silver Era, bards sketch panel tales; seems Miss Raven is a fan, eyes glittering like ink.

Anything tied to the Sorcerer Emperor needs caution, like touching glass knives; better to quit than trigger a dead man’s switch.

“So how do we fight it?”

“Honestly? It’s hard. A normal Bog Fiend makes bogs by breathing, then swims them like a shark in weeds. Elina, can you cast Water Walking?”

“Forgive me, my god has no such leaning,” she mutters, ears drooping like wet leaves, shy from last night’s blush.

It’s fine; Stini treats shame like a party trick, and we laugh it off like warm rain.

Thin skin won’t last in this crew; humor’s our armor when steel slips.

“Stini, can you use the applied spell ‘Crossing on a Reed’?”

“Nope!”

“Don’t answer that excited! Seriously. Warriors sink in bogs like stones, and attack spells barely scratch Golden Age relics. Bad start.”

“What about the applied ‘Cloak of Flight’? Or ‘Spatial Lag Points’ to stand on? If ground’s bad, think sky.”

“These aren’t combat spells. Close-quarters isn’t supported. Cloak of Flight moves at a fixed, slow pace.

Spatial Lag Points hold too little pressure; they won’t bear your full sprint.

If you had the high space spell ‘Blessing of the Lord of Skies,’ that’d change the weather.”

“Heh, don’t.”

“So what then? Do we swim in, get bit, and trade a life for a kill?

No idea how the Emperor’s modded bite differs. If it’s only chainsaw teeth, thank the stars—we sacrifice one friend, and we enter the tower.”

“That’s awful! Why are we here, again?”

For money like glinting coins, for a clear like ringing steel, for trades like quiet handshakes, for credits like tidy ledgers.

Not for justice; justice wears white, and we wear road dust.

“Vice-captain, if you allow it, I’d like to try.”

Catherine raises her hand like a banner, a soldier’s habit neat as stitched leather.

Right, Catherine’s Aerian, and their signature magic is—

“Imbuement magic. I believe I can shoulder this burden, like a wing taking wind.”

“In Imbuements, can you put someone on water or bog?”

I’ve learned most general spells, like a thief with a full keyring; Skystride Imbuement or the lesser Waterway Imbuement both do it.

“Sorry, Vice-captain. I can’t.”

Then what do you mean, teasing me like a cat with a string?

“But I can try to kill it with an arrow.”

All right—here’s candy, here’s a bonus—go for it, and let the bow sing like a skylark.

“Um… Vice-captain, has anyone told you your intensity scares girls off like thunder?”

Vega said it; I didn’t care, a rock ignoring river chatter.

“You’re funny once we know you, but don’t tease new girls too much,” she says, words soft as feathers yet sharp as a pin.

Enough chatter. Catherine draws a long arrow, and her hymn rises like dawn over frost.

“First Strata: Acceleration.”

Golden runes cling to the arrowhead, a swarm of fireflies circling iron.

Spells differ by signature, yet methods rhyme; think of it as temporary enchantment dialed past the human limit.

“Second Strata: Godspeed.”

She nocks and draws, and light crawls from arrow to bow, even the string humming like a sunlit wire.

A conceptual domain—my gut tightens like a drum—this is rare air.

Few in the world touch concept and cast from it; count them in the low hundreds, most with hair white as snow.

By design, my concept attack is Shadow mana corrosion, a knife in fog, hardly proper magic.

Stini’s sword tricks aren’t titans either, yet they still call us prodigies, the crowd a chorus we never asked for.

Wrapped in elemental motes, Catherine looks like a visiting god, beauty sharp as winter stars.

“Third Strata: Certain Kill.”

The runes multiply and knot, the shaft engraved like a prayer stick, gold dimming to show lines clear as frost.

Godspeed is high concept; but when you mark an enemy with causality—death bound—that’s the gods’ playing field.

I don’t need Vega to tell me who she is; the memory climbs my spine like cold rain.

When Andreas rose from the Arctic Tundra, dragging the Demon Realm like chains, he met the Grand Knight-Captain of the Radiant Guard—Catherine Breeze.

Catherine loosed ten thousand feathered arrows, each a hawk’s scream, pinning, tearing, imbuing, crushing, striking, concept biting like winter.

Alone, she grievously wounded the Endless Demon King in a storm of white wings.

But Andreas lacks the concept of injury or death, a void wrapped in fury; any blow is a wave against a cliff.

His will only burned hotter, a kiln fed by every strike.

Facing him, Catherine’s mind was tainted, shadows licking her thoughts like cold oil.

She abandoned the kill for a leash, buying time for the Primordial Nine Races to migrate north like flocks.

Three days later, her quiver ran dry, and her mind frayed like old silk; she chose to die standing.

I remember her face, smeared with blood like war paint, and her last words—

“Remember my name, Demon King. I am Breeze. Now watch mortal defiance bite like the wind!”

She let go, and the arrow flew, speed climbing like a storm—faster, faster, faster—

Then it seemed to stop, a hummingbird frozen, the sign of entering the Godspeed Realm.

Within the Godspeed Realm, any action—no matter how long—looks like a blink to the world.

The arrow punched the Bog Fiend’s skull; blood and brain spattered like red rain on dark reeds.

Then it drilled through chest and gut into earth; the bog boomed like a hammer blow, mud fountaining, and hard ground showed its bones.

Look close: countless cracks converge at the arrow’s bite, a spiderweb with a golden heart.

“So cool!” “I want that power—strong and simple—but I’m a cleric, not a fighter,” Elina sighs, ears drooping like wilted petals.

Stini cheers, a spring lark bursting from mud, while Elina dodges my eyes like a cat.

I stand quiet, my face a winter lake. “Breeze…”

This arrow feels like that day, a ghost riding the bowstring.

Her final sacrifice earned three days more; Andreas, theoretically unbindable, was tangled in gales, frozen like a beast in ice.

When he charged the world again, the Sorcerer Emperor’s legions returned, gods and the Primordial Nine Races ready like a drawn net.

Because Catherine existed, the Silver Era stretched another century; Head had time to leave a legacy to the exiles, and our civilization didn’t shatter like glass.

So how will fate knot us this time, and where will it cut, like shears in silk?

“Stay tuned for the next episode… no, used that joke—what else is fun?”

“You’re babbling. I don’t get you at all!”

“Raven, girls without a sharp persona end up the designated deadpan, like straight men in stage plays.”

“You say nonsense nonstop; that’s why I’m exhausted,” she huffs, words fluttering like sparrows.

“We know you’re close; don’t waste time. Let’s clear this tower today. I’m not camping in this creepy place.”

Stini leads us to the gate, boots whispering on stone, and we break down the Bog Fiend’s corpse like engineers with knives.

Golden Age black-tech gleams: a mana burst combustion unit, a six-barrel rune cannon, a detachable petrifying eye, and more small sins of genius.

Even the Sorcerer Emperor’s modded materials will sell like gold leaf.

Sell to mages, and you make a killing; even in the Silver Era, noble souls sharpen knives when a rich mage walks by.

“Honestly, this Bog Fiend alone pays for the trip, like a chest spilled open.”

“Andor, I heard you’ve got business channels, roads paved in coin?”

It’s all yours—sell it and bring the coin back for an even split, like water poured into a shared bowl.

Y-you trust me that much, like handing me a key under a clear night?

After all, most adventuring teams break over loot splits—the money’s hard to divide, like trying to slice fog.

Hand the haul to one person, and you’re afraid they’ll stash some away, like a squirrel burying nuts.

Being an adventurer is a headache, like juggling blades in a windstorm.

Yeah, we trust you, big-time—solid as a stone set in a river.

Mm, I’m guessing your hidden line is, “These magical devices are heavy,” heavy as river-soaked iron.

Best hand them to Andor—he can stash them in the Shadow, safe like stones sunk in still water, heh-heh, something like that?

I don’t “heh-heh”—I’m no alley cat snickering in the dark.

Our not-at-all-imposing captain, Stini, waved the Holy Sword we use to skin swamp fiends; his shouts clattered like tin, the blade flashing like fish scales.

So the rest of it is true, then—mask off, cards on the table.

No, don’t twist my words—don’t fold them into paper cranes just to make a point.

Then Raven stepped in to smooth the ripples, her voice like cool water.

Enough, Andor—let the kettle cool.

Sure, none of us know storage magic; that’s one reason, like a missing pocket.

But handing you these things still means we trust you, a lantern held in fog.

I’m joking, just teasing her—don’t take it too… like a breeze that only ruffles reeds—

A violent shake cut me off, then wave after wave of tremors rolled in, hard enough that even Stini couldn’t keep his footing, like a boat in breakers.

An earthquake? Didn’t feel like it, because we all sensed the source beating right beside us, like a heart in the wall—

From inside the Tower of Final Stars, a buried bell tolling in the dark.

A clammy wind blew past, laced with a smear of magic drawn from darkness; within the Tower of Final Stars, something unearthly crouched like a shadowed beast.

I have a feeling we shouldn’t have come to this dungeon, like stepping onto thin ice—what about you?

Princess Golia, silent for a long time, finally spoke, her words a thin blade of moonlight; no one answered.

Because we all knew she was right, the truth settling like frost in the gut.