After returning to the sea, Eli Walker resumed his focus on deciphering the nature of the Gray Mist. He had no other option—in the looming Fourth Epoch, the Five orthodox Pathways were heading toward extinction. That road was severed. To survive the Age of the Gods, he had to transition into one of the Three Pathways of Weirdness as soon as possible.
The projection he left in Arrodes' mirror world began to recite the honorific names of The Fool:
"The Fool that doesn't belong to this era."
"The mysterious ruler above the Gray Mist."
"The King of Yellow and Black who controls good luck."
"I wish to behold your great Divine Kingdom. Please open the Door."
He repeated this incantation multiple times.
Yet Sefirah Castle remained unresponsive.
To be precise—it wasn't that there was no response. The backdoor he had previously left was still there. Through prayer, he could trigger feedback from the Gray Mist, create talismans, even cleanse traces of contamination using the luck-transferring rune. But no actual connection formed this time.
Eli hadn't realized before how subtly contaminated he'd become after waking in that divine battlefield ruin. No wonder it had been so easy to summon Arrodes back then. Had the reach of the Chaos Sea stretched that far?
Amanises, were you just leaking corruption wherever you went?
He felt a chill rise. As a Sequence 3 Sea King, he couldn't ascend to the Gray Mist even if he'd consumed minor traits from the Error Pathway. But his mirror projection—stabilized by Arrodes' power and carrying his own spirituality—had succeeded before. So why not now?
Had the loophole been patched?
Then how did one explain the repeated projection failures at Sefirah Castle?
The Primordial One was dead. Could the Chaos Sea still upload viral plugins based on Sefirah Castle's patch progress?
Who the hell was the Pillar of the Error Pathway?
"So damn frustrating... I feel like a prisoner."
Eli could feel that his real self—the Sea King—was leisurely fishing, while his virtual body was left endlessly attempting logins like some cursed user typing the wrong password. He even resorted to Klein's original luck-transferring ritual, reciting from "Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth for Blessings" all the way to "The Fool that doesn't belong to this era," on repeat.
Even Arrodes gave up and switched to watching Eli's true body fish in the mirror-ocean, leaving the projection alone to mutter like a broken incantation machine.
What Eli didn't know was that above the Gray Mist, the prayer queue had already reached 99+.
When Zhou Mingrui saw the relentlessly blinking crimson star—blinking, blinking, still blinking—his modern OCD tendencies kicked in.
And he clicked it.
...Nothing happened.
The blinking stopped.
Zhou Mingrui looked left and right. Nothing else changed. He wasn't sure if he should be relieved or disappointed.
His gaze wandered to the other non-blinking crimson stars. Curious, he poked another. His logic was simple: blinking ones stop blinking when tapped, so maybe these would do nothing? Or... burst into flames?
As always, disaster struck where boredom lingered.
The star he touched flared, a dreamlike flame igniting on his fingertip. Shocked, his hand twitched—touching another star. That one lit up, too.
"I can still fix this!"
He panicked—but remembered the last star: maybe pressing it again would turn it off?
Before he could act, however, a flood of elvish chanting—a storm of spiritual noise—rushed into his mind like a corrupted audio file. Nearly a hundred voices played simultaneously, an elven hymn twisted into cacophony.
These prayers were meant to arrive one at a time, but network lag—or perhaps an overloaded plugin—caused all the invocations to crash into his consciousness like demonic screeching.
It paralyzed Zhou Mingrui.
Only after long moments did his mind regain clarity—just in time to see three blurred projections flicker into existence above the Gray Mist.
Meanwhile, inside the mirror realm, Eli Walker was slouching on a rocky outcrop, the vast sea around him rendered in impeccable 3D. His enthusiasm had long faded. He was now half-heartedly fishing.
"Open Sesame, Oolong exits the cave..."
"Balala Power, Little Fairy transform…"
He lazily recited childish incantations while watching his true body empty a bucket of fish back into the sea. Suddenly, a crimson spark flared before his eyes.
He blinked.
What password had he just entered?
Above the Gray Mist.
"Sir, where is this?"
"What do you want to do?"
Eli's consciousness solidified. The moment his vision returned, he heard those two voices.
Something felt… off.
He looked toward the speakers. Through the curling Gray Mist, he vaguely saw a petite blond girl, and a dark-haired man with tangled seaweed-like hair. That face…
A flicker of déjà vu surged through him.
They were staring at something in terror.
He turned to follow their line of sight.
In the depths of the Mist stood a towering, unknowable figure.
Zhou Mingrui?
Klein Moretti?
Or… Celestial Worthy?
Was this a dream?
What language were they speaking?
Ruenese?
Had he learned that yet?
No, but he could improvise. A language comprehension talisman would do the trick. Or maybe the Gray Mist space offered an auto-translation plugin?
Eli instinctively crooked his finger, triggering the plugin he'd once embedded. The feedback told him it was still operational, but it hadn't run in… thousands of years?
Good news: the plugin still functioned. Automatic translation could be enabled.
Bad news: he had seemingly transmigrated. Again.
What was the point of a virtual projection transmigrating?
Eli's brain momentarily froze, as stunned as the boy standing opposite him.
Unlike the bewildered but focused Zhou Mingrui, Eli's fingers trembled, his eyes darting without focus. He resembled someone whose code had crashed mid-load.
From Zhou Mingrui's perspective, however, the stunned, black-haired figure now appeared… mysterious.
The other three seemed absolutely terrified.
They're afraid of me?
The realization struck Zhou Mingrui like divine inspiration. Immediately, he straightened his posture, lowered his voice, and coolly responded—like a god replying to a pilgrim.
"An attempt."