Upon his return to Dry City, Minos rested for only a week. During that time, he caught up on everything he had experienced on Elves Island, including what he had done before the start of the Continental Tournament.

During these days, he also returned to his Spatial Kingdom to check on his groups’ progress and to help a number of individuals undergo qualitative evolution through immortal energy.

The empire’s technological progress was very advanced, having improved dramatically since the addition of Voyager to its studies and experiments.

The Black Plain Empire was still far behind the Mechanic Empire in many respects. Still, Minos’ group was gradually developing armor, weapons, and other artifacts similar to those of the aliens from The Adamant Land.

Meanwhile, the experiments with the immortal energy techniques developed based on the methods of the Ancient Folk were going well, and the special battalion created to test such techniques after Minos was much stronger than it had been months ago.

New problems had arisen, causing the group to improve their methods even more.

Finally, Willow and Aarav were approaching the most important moment of their meditations, both very close to reaching level 100.

From what Minos had seen in his Spatial Kingdom, they should advance in another year at most, and their advances should be very close together, a sign of their advanced age.

That reassured Minos but also Henry, who was still serving as the Spatial Kingdom’s ‘gatekeeper’ at the Black Plain Army’s new headquarters. Th link to the orign of this information rsts n Novlꜰre.nt

Minos had been talking to Henry during those days, informing the God of what had happened at the Continental Tournament but also of Emperor Stuart’s current plans and how much longer he would be stuck in his position as ‘Gatekeeper.’

And so the day came for Minos to leave his state once again!

…

After leaving his family in Dry City and instructing everyone to go to the Spatial Kingdom to cultivate as soon as possible, Minos went to the thing that was calling him.

Ever since he woke up from his vision on Elves Island, he’d felt something calling him, almost as if he were a tracker connected to something.

As soon as he was done with his affairs in his empire, he decided to go right after it so that he would also have a justification for giving Callie the Divine Medicine.

This woman was nervously waiting for him in Dry City, having offered to go with Minos on this new journey.

But Emperor Stuart refused the ice woman’s offer, knowing that the place he was going to had no Divine Medicine for him to harvest, but something strange that even he didn’t understand.

Minos couldn’t use his spatial abilities to travel through the Spiritual World at the moment, as the chaos of the Ice Age might get in his way. So he headed southwest at high speed, using only his movement technique and his senses to choose the path ahead.

Considering how he planned to travel, it would take him weeks to reach his destination, which was far from the core of the Black Plain Empire.

Days of travel would pass, and Minos would leave the Central Continent. Still, the signal he had been following would remain weak, indicating that he still had a long way to go to reach his destination.

…

Three weeks after Minos left Dry City…

Minos was standing on a flying island between the borders of the Ancestral Sea and the South Sea, at an extreme point in the Spiritual World where almost no life existed.

Below him was a rough patch of sea, from which he could see icebergs here and there, extreme storms on the horizon, and lots and lots of rain.

The winds were strong in that area, and the whole sky was covered with gray clouds, occasionally lit by lightning.

On the small floating island where he was now, Minos had a fire before him as he sat on a dead tree trunk.

His surroundings were desolate; natural phenomena had already ravaged the top of this small island, and all its beauty had been destroyed.

‘I feel like I’m getting closer to the place that’s calling me.’ Minos thought as he looked southwest. ‘That must be at the bottom of the sea… I’ll probably have to dig up the seabed to get to it.’

But as he thought about where exactly the thing calling him was, he couldn’t help but wonder what it was all about.

The images he had seen in his vision were not clear. He didn’t think the vision had shown him the future but the past. But that was beyond reason. After all, the elves would never try to show the past to the winner of the Continental Tournament.

So he wasn’t quite sure that the vision was about the past, about Panvuter. His previous thought connected the vision with that great ancient world because that made sense to him. But other things made him doubt it, which only confused him.

The fact that he didn’t know what was calling him and what he would find also bothered him. In any case, he had learned that this world hid deeper stories than anyone could imagine. He honestly didn’t doubt anything else and was just curious to know what this vision would give him.

The vision had obviously escaped the control of the elves, but it served to find something of great value. Minos still believed he would find such a thing, so he was more excited than worried.

“Time to move on.” After finishing his meal, something he didn’t need at his level but which he used to recover the energy he had used during his journey.

It was also frigid all over the Spiritual World now, so eating something warm was very pleasant for people like Minos.

When he finished eating and decided to continue his journey, he put a new layer of warm clothes on his body before he set off in a southeasterly direction, gradually lowering his altitude.

As he had expected, the place he was heading for was at the bottom of the sea, which he would soon enter, even considering the icy waters that would try to freeze him.

In a few more days of travel, Minos would arrive at the place where he would have to dig not far from a great spiritual root.

Where would that lead him? He didn’t know, but he was about to find out!