Nash’s eyes lit up. “If this is really a secret realm, there must be treasures here, right?”

  “In a pce like this?” Dante said. “Anything’s possible.”

  The thought was enough to stir all of them. They’d already gained so much—if this really was an untouched realm, then their harvest could be unimaginable.

  “Let’s get the flying boat ready first,” Dante said.

  They all agreed and climbed aboard. But just as the boat lifted into the air, the sky cracked open with thunder.

  “…,” everyone muttered at once.

  Nash hunched his shoulders. “Figures. Don’t see the treasure first—you see the fucking danger.”

  A thunderbolt smmed into them, shaking the craft violently. Dante immediately activated the defensive formation, but more bolts rained down in quick succession.

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  The formation cracked, unable to withstand the endless assault.

  Lauren rummaged through the bag of “junk” Drake had tossed her and pulled out a lightning bead. She flung it onto the prow of the boat.

  The next strike bent toward it, arcing harmlessly into the ground. The bst gouged a massive crater, throwing dirt and gravel everywhere.

  Now they understood why the ndscape was pitted with holes—each one was the scar of lightning.

  But the beads weren’t enough. One or two people, sure. An entire flying boat? Impossible.

  “Dante! Bring it down! We can’t fly in this storm!” Lauren shouted.

  Dante gritted his teeth, steering the boat back toward the ground. The moment the hull scraped dirt, the lightning ceased.

  The four of them just stood there, dumbstruck.

  “The boat’s useless if we’re going to be fried every time we take off…” Lauren muttered.

  Before she could finish, a hideous, featherless bird suddenly darted overhead. It dove into the raging water, snatched a writhing fish, then got struck by a bolt of lightning mid-flight. Both bird and prey fell smoking into the river.

  “…,” Dante exhaled. “So that’s why the riverbank looks like this. The bastards live under constant lightning strikes.”

  But how the hell could fish survive in that chaos? And how could a bird even spot them in the waves?

  No—more important—what about them? Were they going to get roasted just for being nearby?

  The answer came fast. More of the strange birds appeared, sprinting across the gravel with startling speed. They didn’t have feathers, but webbed wings stretched between their limbs, like bats pretending to be birds.

  Nash caught one, curiosity bzing. “What the hell kind of bird is this? If this realm’s made from extraterrestrial debris, then is this thing an alien creature?”

  Dante smirked. “Curious? If you’re really that curious, then—”

  “Ah!”

  Before he could finish, the bird pecked Nash’s finger. Nash yelped, dropped it, and the creature fpped away—only to be obliterated by a lightning strike a heartbeat ter.

  Everyone froze.

  Nash stared at his finger in horror. The flesh around the peck was already turning bck.

  “Fuck—!”

  Lauren’s face darkened. “That bird’s poisonous. Take a detox pill, now!”

  Nash swallowed the Detoxification Pill in a rush, but the bck aura only thickened, crawling farther up his hand like ink bleeding through paper.

  Dante’s face hardened. “The pill’s useless.”

  He pressed two fingers together like a bde and struck Nash’s wrist with precise, practiced force. A halo of golden spiritual light fred, pushing back the poison’s advance.

  The spread slowed, but it didn’t stop.

  Nash’s skin grew cmmy, his face pale. He sagged against Dante, barely able to stay upright.

  “Damn it,” Dante muttered, quickly bracing him by the shoulder.

  Lauren’s eyes flicked from the tiny puncture wound to the flock of strange birds in the distance. “Maybe the antidote’s in the bird itself. Westin, catch one. But be careful.”

  “On it.”

  While Westin went, Lauren looped a rope tightly around Nash’s finger, cutting off blood flow. The bck aura slowed further.

  Nash’s lips trembled. “Am I… am I gonna die?”

  Even bound and suppressed, the venom kept crawling.

  “If all else fails…” Dante said grimly, looking at Lauren. “Freeze his finger and cut it off.”

  “What?!” Nash snapped back to life, his voice cracking. “Cripple me instead?”

  “It wouldn’t be forever,” Dante said ftly. “Once you reach Nascent Soul, you can regrow what’s lost.”

  “…That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Nash muttered, close to tears.

  “Stop scaring him,” Lauren said firmly. “We’ll wait for Westin. We’re not cutting anything off yet.”

  Moments ter, Westin returned, a vine-tangled bird writhing in his grip. He’d bound it tight, even wrapping its beak so it couldn’t strike.

  At that moment, Edmund’s voice brushed against Lauren’s mind. The antidote is in its stomach. A red bead.

  Lauren’s eyes sharpened. She reached forward, but Dante caught her hand.

  “Junior Master, let me,” he said. “We don’t know what else this thing hides.”

  He was protective, always was. Lauren let him take it.

  Dante drew a dagger and gutted the bird with ruthless efficiency. Inside, he found a swollen green venom sac in its throat, then cut deeper until his bde scraped against something hard. A bead, red as blood, glistened in the muck of its stomach.

  Lauren pointed. “That’s it. Give it to Nash.”

  Dante raised an eyebrow at her certainty but didn’t question it. He pressed the foul-smelling bead into Nash’s trembling palm.

  The stench nearly made Nash gag, but he forced it down. Within seconds, the bckness receded, vanishing as if it had never existed.

  Relief washed over all of them.

  Then the mockery began.

  “Still curious, huh?” someone snorted.

  Nash clutched his hand behind his back. “You can’t bme me! You were curious too!”

  “We were curious,” Dante shot back, “but we didn’t touch anything.”

  “Alright, alright,” Nash grumbled. “Guess I’m just faster than you. Go ahead and keep roasting me, but let’s not forget—this pce is crawling with shit that wants us dead. Don’t touch a damn thing.”

  They moved on.

  Upstream, the river grew even more violent. The thunderbolts here didn’t just punish things in the sky—they smmed into the earth at random, leaving nothing but charred wastend. The strange birds had vanished, the ground scorched bare.

  “What the hell is this pce?” Nash muttered, unnerved.

  “I don’t know,” Dante admitted. His voice was tight. “But stay alert. I doubt there’s any treasure here.”

  “Brother Dante,” Nash said, “have some confidence. No grass, no beasts, no birds….”

  While Dante and the others discussed their next move, Lauren’s attention was elsewhere—locked in quiet conversation with Edmund.

  “Have you ever seen what the world looked like at its beginning?” he asked.

  Lauren blinked. “You’re saying this is the beginning of the world? It looks more like the end of the world to me.”

  “The world is always breaking, rebuilding, and renewing,” Edmund replied. “So the beginning and the end don’t look much different.”

  Lauren frowned. “They must look different.”