"But who planted these deceptions?" Icarus murmured to himself. "And when? The study of wizardry and the void are interlinked. It's an unbroken chain of inquiry. If someone had grafted errors into the theory at large, that should have been caught."

He tapped the crystal in his brow. Light flowed beneath its surface. To his people, the motion marked intense thought. Icarus was probing the terrible possibility he had just sketched out—not a wild guess, but the only explanation that matched the mounting failures and contradictions his teams had unearthed. Verifying it, however, would be almost impossible.

As a scholar, he knew well the importance of rigor. Errors could hardly be slipped in halfway through a discipline and remain undetected: scholarship advanced step by step, each rung tested by those who climbed it.

That was why the very idea of a deliberately corrupted foundation was so monstrous—and why only someone with Icarus's perspective would think to raise the issue or even to question it at all. After all, not only did Icarus have oversight over the entire program, he was one of the leading pioneers of the field.

He was also, frankly, in a lonely position. To most, this line of thought would seem blasphemous. Only a small minority, like the physics revolutionaries who once dared to supplant old certainties, would dare to submit such a hypothesis without verifying it in full.

"If the misdirection had been part of the theory from its very beginning, that would explain the contradictions: a theory that looks consistent but can't reproduce the Morningstar isn't simply incomplete. It's built on a flawed premise."

"Hm?"

Icarus paused. The expression on his face shifted to a bright clarity before he sank back into concentration once more.

The crystal on his brow glimmered. He stopped fidgeting. He was using the racial trait of the Winged to boost his thought processes.

The Winged were an ancient, peculiar people—outwardly similar to humans or elves, save for wings and faint markings on their bodies. But their defining trait was the gem set in their foreheads.

The Winged referred to these gems as physical manifestations of their souls, but outsiders were unaware of this designation. They thought of it more like a monster's mana core, providing the Winged with natural mana affinity and superior intelligence.

The gems did confer such properties, but by a different mechanism than a monster's mana core.

The Winged's gems literally embodied their consciousness, fortifying their minds against psychic corruption and the void. It even imparted a peculiar gift: mental seals and inheritance.

Ordinary minds leaked thoughts that could be read by magicians or wizards that specialized in mental spells. In contrast, the Winged could seal their thoughts inside their gems.

Spying on the Winged's minds, fortified with their gems, was all but impossible.

Doing so meant cracking those gems—and the Winged would notice at once.

Their culture had even developed around those gems: two Winged could touch the gems on their foreheads to each other and thereby engage in telepathic communication that transcended speech, as well as pass their gems onto younger Winged as an inheritance.

A whole life's worth of lessons could be imprinted into the crystal and handed down to a capable kin who might make use of it. That was how their tiny race stayed in a position of importance among the five major intelligent races.

Icarus himself bore three such inheritances, greatly enhancing the breadth and depth of his knowledge. To access that information, however, he had to engage his gem.

By entering a state of meditation, he could browse the lucid, secondhand memories stored in other gems—useful, but sometimes fuzzy, recollections that could carry important information. He combed through that information now as he sought out information about the Morningstar.

One memory supplied a crucial line. "After the Morningstar detonates," a voice from the past told him, "whether or not any abyssal creatures have escaped, they are sure to perish in time. The world's environment has itself been altered; the Morningstar is not simply a bomb of raw power."

Icarus returned to that fragment again and again until its implication became plain: the Morningstar changed the world itself.

Those changes could not be limited to the material alone. To eradicate abyssal creatures bound to the void, the void surely had to be altered at the same time.

Murmuring inwardly to himself, Icarus confirmed one thing: the void of this era—and the material realm as well—was no longer the same as in ages past. The world's very environment had diverged from what it had been before Morningstar's detonation. That blast had reshaped the land into a state where abyssal creatures could neither survive nor adapt. In that process, it seemed to have left the intelligent races almost untouched. But wasn't that just a little too convenient?

"On the surface, there might be virtually no difference. But a problem has now emerged: the foundational theories of wizardry and the void have begun to crack. Morningstar has become something that can no longer be reproduced."

Icarus had found what he believed to be a hidden flaw behind the seemingly negligible changes wrought by Morningstar. The disciplines of the void and wizardry had become riddled with contradictions.

"So the misdirection embedded at the very bedrock of wizardry and the void must predate even than the Abyssal Invasion. And Morningstar, that force which changed the world, must have served as the groundwork for the discrepancies we face today in Skyborne City's research into the void..."

At last, a conclusion took shape in Icarus's mind. And because it seemed so natural, so overwhelming, he felt a chill he could not suppress.

The Utopia was a group that no one among the Alliance truly understood. They had emerged out of nowhere—but how long had they actually existed upon this continent? The battle at the Abyssal Depths, a world-shaking event, had been nothing more than a stepping stone for their plans... What extraordinary power must they possess?

For a moment, Icarus found himself strangely dispirited. Every clash they'd had with the Utopia had left them utterly outmatched. Even the God of Light, an established and powerful deity, seemed vulnerable to their influence.

What he had once dismissed as impossible or absurd now seemed entirely reasonable in the context of that organization. And even if all his conjectures were true... so what? Instead of offering clarity, the truth only sowed deeper doubt. Could they even hope to defeat Utopia?

"...Perhaps the Utopia they speak of is truly not such a terrible thing. If it genuinely fulfills the desires of every inhabitant, maybe that isn't so bad, is it?"

With a hint of bitter humor, Icarus found himself trying, almost earnestly, to justify the organization. Perhaps they were indeed striving to create a paradise. Perhaps Utopia was, in its own way, a fine concept.

"Those special zones they created... it's as if they intend the material world to be saturated with void energy, to reshape it into something akin to the void itself. If so, and if everyone possessed the same ability to survive within the void as the Utopia, it might actually work."

He considered their method. It was a theory largely accepted among the scholars of Skyborne City. To make the material realm resemble the void, and to mold reality by the power of one's will... on a certain level, that truly was a kind of utopia.

"Hah. Forget it. In the end, I refuse to believe that a group so willing to twist others' wills could ever produce anything good. And besides, actions like these ought to be left to scholars like us, ought they not?"

A sudden, relieved laugh escaped him as he broke free from his spiral of doubt. His long lease on life had forged a solid sense of self, and he had no intention of trusting a shadowy organization that refused to make its aims clear. If their intentions were so noble, why hide them? Why operate in this manner? No. He would resist them to the bitter end.

"Wait, that book? I could have sworn..."

Something at the edge of his vision caught his attention. In the corner of the nearby shelf sat a book, one he was certain had not been there before.

No longer in meditation, Icarus moved to investigate. But the moment he dropped the technique, the book vanished from his perception. He halted, frowning. Something was wrong...

A simple experiment confirmed it: whenever he disengaged his meditation, the book disappeared completely from his awareness. No matter what method he used, he could not perceive it.

"This isn't some sort of concealment technique. It's something acting on my mind, forcing me to ignore its existence."

Realizing the truth sent a shiver down his spine. Something was constantly interfering with him. Only his meditation shielded him from this influence. It was a horrifying thought: all this time, something had been affecting him, pushing certain things away from his awareness.

Taking a slow, steadying breath, he programmed his physical body—unable to move while he was meditating—with a sequence of mechanical actions. Once he activated the ability again, his body automatically stepped forward, retrieved the book, and opened it.

On the page, words unfurled before him: "That which lies before you belongs to us... Roland."

The message made Icarus's blood run cold.