Chương 464: The Frontier

Before stepping onto the Spire platform, I pulled Jeeves aside into the Sanctum's private command alcove to review our contingencies.

"Jeeves," I said, resting my hand on the slate console.

"If Sector Z-99 experiences a structural breach or a High Court fleet movement while we are off-world, can you run me through the exact response protocol again?" Jeeves offered a calm, reassuring bow, adjusting his cuffs.

"The defensive matrix is absolute, Master. Your primary [Echo of the Ashen] proxy remains permanently docked in the central core, holding twenty percent of your active Star-Core reserves. If a hostile signature approaches our quarantine veil, the proxy will immediately activate the planetary lead-alloy shields, lock down Bastion's airspace, and trigger your soul-link." He pulled up a holographic diagnostic display, pointing to our destination coordinates.

"Furthermore, Master, the planet we have selected — designated as Outpost World V-09 — was not chosen at random. For the past two months, our municipal construction corps and S'skarr vanguard have been quietly constructing a forward base on its northern continent." I raised an eyebrow in genuine, pleasant surprise.

"We already have a foothold on V-09?"

"Indeed," Jeeves smiled thinly.

"It was established as a high-density resource-gathering and training world for our military. This expedition serves as a live stress-test for Ferra's expansion logistics. And because the planet sits within our sector's localized Spire network, the spatial distance is negligible. Transit is instantaneous, allowing your strike team to return to Bastion in a single second if an emergency occurs."

"Excellent work, Jeeves," I chuckled, clapping his shoulder.

"Your foresight makes my job remarkably easy."

"We strive to anticipate your needs, Master," Jeeves bowed. I returned to the Spire vault, joining our expeditionary force — Anna, Crys, Lucas, Silas, Eliza, Edward, and our elite Academy students.

"Everyone ready?" I asked, looking around the platform. The four students nodded vigorously, their hands tightly gripping their weapons, while Edward nervously checked the straps of his diagnostic satchel for the fourth time. I drove the activation slate into the console. The Spire archway ignited with a brilliant, starlight-blue radiance. We stepped into the light, and without a single millisecond of spatial delay, the transition snapped shut.

We stepped out onto a massive, fortified landing terrace constructed from dark magnetic slate. The view took my breath away. Outpost World V-09 was a wild, untamed world of towering violet-leafed forests, jagged quartz mountain chains, and deep, glowing geothermal canyons. But what truly amazed me was the Ferran infrastructure already dominating the valley below. Surrounding the Spire platform was a colossal, twenty-mile-wide fortified base.

Eighty-foot-tall basalt walls, reinforced with Leoric's atomic-welded lead-alloy plating, formed an impenetrable perimeter. Automated kinetic defense turrets hummed along the ramparts, while magitech extraction pumps drew raw thermal energy directly from the valley's geothermal vents to power localized shield barriers. Dozens of Dweorg stone-weavers, S'skarr shadow strikers, Elven scouts, and Ferran administrators moved through the base avenues with organized, military efficiency.

I stood on the terrace, shaking my head in quiet wonder.

"It still amazes me how quickly things get built when you introduce Mana to engineering. Back on Earth, constructing a facility this large would have taken over a decade and many billions of dollars."

"Mana bypasses heavy industrial logistics, Lord," Edward noted, adjusting his glasses as his eyes scanned the automated turrets with deep, academic fascination.

"When an earth-shaper can manipulate the atomic bonds of basalt with a single core-rotation, construction becomes an art form rather than a labor bottleneck." We walked down the grand stairway toward the central administrative hub to register our expedition. I kept a light, passive veil from my [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil] over our group, but as we approached the main registration desk, I lowered the filter slightly to allow the clerk to read our clearances.

The desk clerk — a young Ferran woman in crisp municipal robes — looked up from her diagnostic slate, her eyes casually glancing at our registration tokens. The moment her eyes landed on my face, she froze. Her jaw dropped, her pen clattering against the slate desk. She blinked once, twice, her face turning completely pale before flushing bright red.

"L-Lord... Lord Ascendant?!" The clerk stammered, her voice squeaking so loudly that half the administrative hall turned to look. The outpost commander — a battle-scarred veteran from the early Crucible — rushed out of his private office, his kinetic blade rattling at his side. The moment he saw Anna, Crys, Lucas, and myself standing in front of the desk, he snapped into the sharpest, most rigid military salute I had ever seen.

"Lord Ascendant!" The commander barked, his voice echoing across the hall.

"The garrison of Outpost V-09 reports for duty! We were not informed of an inspection from the High Command!" The entire hall fell dead silent, dozens of scouts and clerks staring at us in absolute, wide-eyed awe. I held up a hand, offering a warm, reassuring smile.

"At ease, Commander. This isn't an official inspection, and there is no need for panic. We are here on an off-world training and scouting expedition to prepare for the upcoming System sanctioned events. We are heading into the unmapped eastern crags to clear high-hazard beast populations and survey potential quartz veins." This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"At once, Lord Eren!" The commander bowed deeply, his hands trembling with pride as he stamped our expedition clearance.

"The entire garrison is at your disposal!"

"Thank you, Commander. Keep up the good work here," I nodded. We exited the fortress through the eastern blast doors, stepping out into the wild, untamed wilderness of V-09. The moment the heavy gates slammed shut behind us, the comfortable safety of the base vanished, replaced by the raw, chaotic pressure of a Tier 7 high-hazard rift environment. The air was thick with volatile, electrified mana that hummed against our skin, and the distant roars of territorial beasts echoed through the violet forests.

I turned to face the group, adjusting my dark cloak as I looked at the four eager Academy students and Edward.

"Alright," I said, my tone shifting from friendly leader to an absolute, unyielding supervisor.

"Here are the ground rules for this expedition." Jared and the others immediately stood at attention, while Vesk's tail flicked in sharp focus.

"From this moment on, you will treat this wilderness as if I am not here," I commanded calmly.

"I will not clear your path. I will not kill your monsters, and I will not scout your terrain. Lucas, Silas, Anna, and Crys will lead the vanguard, but Jared, Vesk, Talise, Darren and Devon will handle frontline combat while the others do resource extraction until rotation." I looked directly into Edward's nervous eyes.

"And Edward will analyze the environment under live combat conditions."

"I will only step in," I added, my voice dropping into a low, serious rumble, "if an anomaly threatens absolute, permanent erasure. Otherwise, your survival and your growth are in your own hands. Understood?"

"Understood, Instructor Eren!" The students answered in unison. For the next six hours, our expedition pushed deep into the unmapped eastern crags, and the results were a magnificent demonstration of our city's growth. The wilderness tested them immediately. While traversing a narrow basalt canyon, our vanguard was ambushed by a pack of six Void-Gorged Basalt Wyrms — fifty-foot-long armored serpents whose scales were infused with unrefined alloys, capable of spitting streams of corrosive magma.

The students didn't panic. Vesk executed a sleek phase-shift, her body dissolving into shadowy slits that allowed her to step straight through a magma blast, appearing atop the lead wyrm's neck to drive her phase-daggers through its cranial scales. Jared wove a non-linear gravity-slope that flipped a second wyrm onto its back, exposing its soft underbelly, while Talise channeled a razor-sharp wind-vortex that severed its venom sacs in a single, fluid strike.

Darron, moving with surprising agility for his size, used his low-friction footwork to slide beneath a third wyrm's tail-sweep, driving his kinetic hammer into its knee-joint with a loud, bone-shattering crack. Behind them, Edward stood pressed against a boulder, his jaw practically dragging through the dirt as he watched the teenage students dismantle fifty-foot monsters with light-speed precision.

"By the laws of thermodynamics..." Edward muttered in utter, breathless disbelief, his hands trembling as he frantically recorded diagnostic data on his slate.

"They're fifteen years old! A fifteen-year-old girl just redirected five hundred tons of kinetic mass using a gravity-slope! This world truly violates every evolutionary threshold I've ever studied…" Eliza, standing beside him with a protective shield array active, let out a soft, delighted laugh.

"Welcome to the world of essence cultivation, Edward. Data is wonderful, but out here, Willpower rewrites the biology books." I watched Eliza and Edward from a high basalt ledge above, keeping my [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil] running to stay conceptually invisible. I noticed the natural, comfortable camaraderie growing between them.

Eliza was guiding Edward through the harsh realities of the wild, showing him how to sample unrefined energy nodes without triggering environmental backlash, while Edward's sharp, analytical insights into macro-cosmic physics were helping Eliza refine her elixir formulas. A quiet, warm smile touched my lips. Eliza had spent cycles buried in medical research and civic stress. Seeing her find an intellectual peer — someone who shared her boundless curiosity and passion for learning — was deeply heartwarming.

I made a mental note to ensure Edward received sufficient defensive artifacts to keep him safe as his cultivation progressed. As the afternoon progressed, our expedition uncovered two massive, un-mined veins of high-grade minerals buried in the canyon walls, alongside the crumbling ruins of an ancient watchtower.

Anna and Crys coordinated the site security, Crysanthe using her [Obsidian Ribbon] to anchor the unstable spatial shears around the ruins, while Anna's [Final Word] eliminated scouting beasts from miles away with silent, instant-hit temporal arrows.

Whenever a student suffered a minor sprain or kinetic burn during the skirmishes, I would flick a microscopic, invisible thread of my [Syntropy] through the void, flatly denying the timeline of the minor injury before the pain could even register on their nerves, allowing them to keep fighting without breaking their focus. While supervising their movements, I didn't neglect my own cultivation. Floating in the air above the canopy, I maintained my internal dual-spiral core-rotation.

I cycled my Star-Core, compressing Quintessence with my inner spiral while circulating my golden-veined [Voidflame] through my conduits, refining my soul gate's throughput with every passing hour. By late evening, we set up camp inside a secure cavern overlooking the valley. The camp was alive with warmth and triumphant laughter.

A crackling fire burned in the center of the cave, roasting thick cuts of wyrm meat, while Jared and Toby enthusiastically demonstrated their attack combos to Lucas, who offered boisterous critiques and combat tips. Edward sat near the fire, eagerly debating energy fluid-dynamics with Eliza, his [Thirst for Knowledge] skill glowing softly as his core absorbed the day's vast harvest. I sat on a high stone ridge outside the cavern entrance, looking down at the happy, thriving camp under the starry alien sky.

They performed brilliantly today. Their synchronization was sharp, their morale was high, and their confidence was soaring. Perhaps... a little too high. A slow, dark, and utterly wicked grin spread across my face as my eyes flashed with a starless black and radiant crimson fire. Confidence was a wonderful foundation, but the upcoming Crucible would not be a controlled, predictable field trip.

It would be a chaotic, ruthless meat-grinder where enemies attacked without warning, from impossible angles, using dirty tricks and overwhelming force. If they were going to survive the ninety-day challenge, they needed to learn how to handle an absolute, catastrophic crisis. I quietly pulled four high-density [Echo of the Ashen] proxies from my armory. I disguised their physical shells in ragged, menacing black predator-armor, suppressing their auras completely under my [Prime Axiom's Nullifying Veil].

I uploaded a complex, ruthless guerrilla-warfare combat design into their core arrays, commanding them to silently infiltrate the surrounding crags and establish an un-crackable, four-point encirclement around the valley.

At first light, when my team stepped out of the cavern expecting a peaceful morning march, my proxies would launch an all-out, coordinated ambush — deploying gravity Domains, spatial-locks, and suppressed strikes that would push every single one of them to their absolute physical and mental breaking points. I leaned back against the stone ridge, watching the stars, chuckling softly into the cool night wind.

"Sleep well," I whispered with a dark, wide grin.

"Tomorrow morning, class officially begins."