"So, what exactly are you two preparing for this time, if I may ask?" Mira said, her voice tinged with curiosity. "You've both been busy for days now. I probably can't help much, but I'd still like to know."

She had already heard about it from Lilya, who'd gone to see what Wang Yu and Avia were doing and had come back shaking her head, speechless. Even Lilya, who usually shared her sister's odd ways of thinking, couldn't make sense of it. That only made Mira more curious.

"It's nothing special," Wang Yu replied easily. "We're just digging a big hole. A very big one. It might come in handy later. It's on the plain in front of the cursebinding spire. You can see it from the top of the tower."

As he spoke, he drew a line in the air. The power of the Chariot flared, and the image of a vast landscape shimmered into view before them.

Mira blinked, and then understood why Lilya had come back shaking her head. Wang Yu and Avia really had spent all these days doing nothing but digging a single, colossal pit in the middle of that once-green plain.

Once lush and level, the plain now yawned open into a gargantuan crater. It was difficult to gauge its full scale through the projected image alone, but Mira knew the surrounding hills well. The enormity of it was staggering.

The hole was deep enough to swallow the entire landscape; one could have inverted a whole hill and dropped it inside without a trace.

"Well," Mira murmured, lifting her teacup with a faint smile, "that's... quite the hole. A little excessive, perhaps."

She didn't understand what the two of them were up to, but she didn't need to. Whatever they were planning, they must have had their reasons. As a mother, she chose to trust them.

"Hehe, I did most of the digging myself!" Avia said proudly, her bright smile brimming with mischief. "My strength's already close to that of a legendary magician. Give me a few more years, and I think I'll break through."

"Impressive," Mira said warmly, clapping her hands. Her daughter's joy was infectious, and her progress filled her heart with pride.

"Alright, then," Avia went on cheerfully, "Wang Yu's been idle for long enough. Time to drag him back out there and make the hole even bigger. You rest well, Mom!"

She slipped behind Wang Yu, claiming the Chariot's power for herself. Magic surged. A shimmering Gate of Phases unfolded around them, enclosing both in its light. With a wave and a smile, they vanished and reappeared at the rim of the great pit moments later.

"This scale should do," Wang Yu said after a glance into the depths. "We've hit the obsidian and the layers of bedrock with magic resistance?"

Wang Yu looked down the side of the pit. It was dark and gloomy, with nothing in sight. He could hear the rush of air; there were strong currents rising up from within, a testament to just how large and deep the pit was.

Avia nodded. "Mm. We're there. I could dig deeper with magic, but it wouldn't be as fast as using your Chariot's power."

That pit was the fruit of Avia's recent efforts. She had begun by summoning countless earth elementals from the elemental plane, who were quite willing to work for the treasures she kept within her Seed of Eden. For them, reshaping earth was as effortless as breathing.

After reaching the deeper subterranean layers, she had relied on her own dual talents as a magician and wizard, using a channeled seventh-tier spell to expand the pit's diameter and depth. Now it was nearly ten thousand meters deep and was brushing up against the strata of dense, magic-resistant rock.

"Let's keep going," Wang Yu said, taking her hand. "A bit deeper should be enough, but we won't do what the dwarves and gnomes once did. We're not trying to see what's hiding at the world's core."

Hand in hand, they leapt from the rim. Air resistance slowed their fall as the wind howled past them.

"Wang Yu," Avia asked mid-descent, forming wind spells around them, "be honest, am I really worse at cooking than my mother?"

She hadn't really been upset about it—it was just ordinary banter.

He chuckled. "Well, when it comes to desserts, you're still a bit behind her. But grilled meat? Between you and me, yours suits my taste better."

Avia sighed, puffing her cheeks out. "Figures. Mom is amazing. Still... I'll keep practicing. Someday, you'll admit my desserts taste better!"

"I'll be waiting for that day," Wang Yu said with a grin. "But don't eat too much while practicing, alright? You're a knight too, remember."

He teased her with a light pinch at her waist—not that there was much to pinch.

Avia's cheeks flushed pink, half embarrassed, half pleased.

The wind spell slowed them further, and they landed gently at the bottom. The air was scorching, well over a hundred degrees, and it was utterly dark. Sunlight couldn't reach this far. What awaited them was a realm of stifling heat and oppressive silence.

But neither of them minded. Both had drawn strength from the Lady of the Night, and neither heat nor darkness could hinder their senses now.

"Yeah, this is it," Wang Yu said, crouching to touch the burning ground. "The magic-resistant layer. Beyond this point, we'll need the Chariot's force. Neither magic nor brute strength will cut it anymore."

He extended his perception through the rock, feeling the interlocked strata of obsidian and enchanted minerals forming a solid, magic-defying shell.

Sky, earth, and sea were the three domains of the material world. Yet even after countless centuries, the intelligent races still knew little about the extremities of these domains.

Even during the war at the Abyssal Depths, they had barely scratched the crust of the earth. The depths of the sea remained unknown; the heights of the heavens were unreachable. The stratosphere marked the boundary of mortal knowledge. Beyond that lay only the cosmic dark from which the abyssal creatures had first descended.

For all their wars and triumphs, the greatest feat of mortal civilization had been the Morningstar, that weapon which once cracked a continent's surface. But even that "continent" was merely the outer layer of the true landmass beneath their feet. Compared to the immeasurable depths of the earth, their efforts had barely gone beyond the "skin" of the world.

In recorded history, only the dwarves and gnomes had ever reached the earth's deepest known layers—or at least, that was what the official records claimed. As for the lost legends and unwritten ages before history began... who could say what truths lay buried there?

Back then, the dwarves and gnomes, brimming with sturdy confidence from their growing industries and technological might, had embarked upon an exploration of the world's deepest layers. They were driven by an unquenchable curiosity.

At around fifty thousand meters below the surface, the bedrock began to liquefy. Temperatures there rivaled those within the elemental plane of fire itself. At such depths, the properties of mana and void energy no longer bore any resemblance to their forms on the surface.

Even the most heat-resistant materials known aboveground would undergo fundamental changes, becoming unstable and unusable. The dwarves and gnomes built relay stations every few kilometers, constantly redesigning their machinery and forging new alloys, all to push ever deeper into the earth.

And then—boom! When their drill pierced through a stratum of liquefied, high-energy rock polymer, the entire shaft erupted. A cataclysmic blast surged upward from the deepest chamber, obliterating every monitoring station along the tunnel and reducing the city at its mouth to molten ruin.

No one could say how much the dwarves and gnomes lost in that single explosion. What was certain was that they never attempted another descent. To be fair, the war at the Abyssal Depths that started up shortly after left them little chance to do so. Still, one ought never underestimate the stubbornness of those short folk. Given time, they would surely have tried to dig down again.

That cataclysm, however, did leave behind a peculiar legacy. Among the ruins of that sunken city, the dwarves unearthed a trove of strange minerals, crystals with terrifying energy capacity and a unique pattern of releasing energy unlike anything else they had ever seen. They named the substance Terra, after the ancient name for earth.

A considerable portion of the Morningstar, that fearsome bomb, had been forged from Terra. The Dwarven King's warhammer, Moltenheart, used it as its core. The armors and weapons of his royal guard, the legendary dwarves of old, were likewise alloyed with its essence.

To be honest, Wang Yu coveted that material greatly. If he could use Terra to fill the gaps of his starsteel blade, the weapon would become a thing of wonder. But for now, it remained a dream.

He pressed his hand to the searing wall of the mana-resistant bedrock and called forth the power of the Chariot. The earth trembled at his command, layers of stone shifting obediently aside as the pit deepened at a steady pace.

To Wang Yu, it mattered little whether the stone resisted magic or void, whether it was tough or brittle. Before the power of the Chariot, all lifeless matter was equal. Only time separated him from his goal.

Still, the process was far from quick. That was why Avia had handled the upper layers herself. Her efficiency in clearing non-resistant stone far outpaced his own.

"A few more thousand meters should do it," Wang Yu murmured. "After that, we can take our time."

The pit deepened under his will. He didn't intend to match the dwarves and gnomes' record from ancient times. He just needed it to be deep enough for his purpose. The world beneath their feet was vast, and it would be a shame not to make use of it.

A faint stir brushed his senses. Both Wang Yu and Avia, who was storing excavated earth within the Seed of Eden, turned their eyes toward the disturbance. Someone else had entered the pit.

"Might I assist you, Tower Master?"

Wang Yu greeted the old man who had appeared at the bottom. He was hardly ever surprised anymore. Even the Tower Master of the Cursebinding Spire, whose arrival was heralded with only a wisp of spatial fluctuation, had been noticed well in advance.

"Don't mind me," said the old wizard kindly. "I merely wished to see what you two were preparing. Lilya mentioned this... rather large excavation of yours, and I must admit, my curiosity got the better of me. It's remarkable. Truly remarkable."

The old man's smile was gentle, almost grandfatherly. Ignoring his power and title, he looked no different from any kindly elder one might meet in town.

"Haha, it's nothing so grand," Wang Yu replied lightly. "Just like you, we want to ensure we have the strength to protect ourselves and those we care about in times of chaos."

Though the Tower Master hadn't met Wang Yu before, both of them had a rather good initial impression of the other.

"Protect, eh?" The Tower Master chuckled wryly and waved his hand. "No, no. I am but a coward, a timid old fool who only knows how to run."

"That can't be true, Tower Master," Avia interjected, shaking her head. "If you were as cowardly as you claim, you could never have come up with your theory of cursebinding. It grows less restrictive as its practitioner grows stronger, and is full of clever loopholes to outwit its own constraints."

The old wizard coughed awkwardly. "Ahem. Let's not dwell on that. Tell me, if you don't mind: what exactly are you working on? Nothing too detailed. Just a rough idea will do."

Wang Yu didn't hesitate. The pit lay within the territory of the cursebinding spire, and it was with the Tower Master's tacit approval that they were digging here in the first place. There was no need for secrecy.

"I'm sure you've seen the unrest spreading across the continent," Wang Yu began. "I don't know much, but from what I've experienced and learned, I'm sure something monumental is about to happen. There are great forces pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

"The chaos is inevitable," he continued. "Sooner or later, it will reach us. We can only prepare. The ideal approach would be to meet every crisis head-on, to resolve problems as they arise—but realistically, that's impossible."

He laughed softly, shaking his head. "Whoever's orchestrating all this has been planning for years, decades, maybe longer. They're master schemers. I'm not clever enough to outthink them. Even with Avia's help, or the wisdom of others, those hidden in the dark are far too difficult to deal with."

"So," he said, eyes glinting with calm resolve, "to overcome the difference in knowledge, timing, and every other disadvantage we face... all I can do—" He smiled faintly. "—is to trust in my physical strength."