The data fragments drifting around all stopped at once.
Ethan looked at him.
"A cage?"
"Correct."
Owin shaped a sphere with both hands.
"You were born inside it, grew up inside it, fought inside it, and assumed that the sky, the continent, the Void, and the lands beyond the safe zones were the entire world."
His fingers slowly closed together.
"But all of it sits inside a cage."
"Emperor is the threshold where you can touch that cage."
Ruo Yan asked,
"Emperor isn’t the final level?"
"Of course not."
Owin looked at her as though the answer were painfully obvious.
"Emperor only gives you the right to realize the wall exists. You can touch it, maybe even see part of the view on the other side."
"But realizing the cage and breaking the cage are two completely different things."
Laira stared straight at him.
"And you?"
"Me?"
Owin laughed, leaned back, and spread both arms with theatrical flair.
"Pfff! Please."
"I left this cage a long time ago."
The void went quiet for several seconds.
Ethan didn’t doubt his words.
Someone who could casually toss a Mythical treasure into a space built while drunk, and who could see through Laira’s true level, clearly couldn’t be confined by the system humanity currently knew.
Owin continued.
"If fate allows, we’ll meet someday in the Greater World."
"What’s the Greater World like?" Ethan asked.
"Bigger out there."
Owin rested his chin on his hand and seemed to think it over.
"More powerhouses."
"More treasures."
"More lunatics too."
He was silent for a few seconds, then waved his hand.
"All right, no spoilers."
"Knowing too much kills the thrill."
Laira huffed softly.
"You just don’t want to explain."
"Could be."
Owin turned to Ruo Yan and pointed at the Necromancer.
"Now, about this guy."
Ruo Yan’s expression immediately grew more serious.
"The corpse you saw was the Necromancer’s original body."
The green flames in the puppet’s eye sockets flickered.
Owin clicked his tongue.
"This fool was too impatient back then. He felt his realm was sufficient, his preparations were complete, so he forced a breakthrough on his own."
"Didn’t tell me."
"Didn’t set up any guards."
"Didn’t even check whether an enemy was watching."
Owin looked at the Necromancer and gave a cold smile.
"Result: ambushed at his weakest moment."
Ruo Yan placed her hand on the puppet’s shoulder.
"Who attacked him?"
"Don’t know."
"You didn’t investigate?"
"I did."
"Then why don’t you know?"
Owin sighed.
"Because by the time I got there, the attacker had already fled this world. The trail was cut very cleanly too."
Ruo Yan fell silent.
Owin looked at her.
"If you can avenge him, you’ll receive a very large reward."
"What kind of reward?"
"Not telling."
Ruo Yan frowned.
Owin immediately raised his hand.
"Don’t look at me like that. The reward depends on who you kill, what you recover, and how much the Necromancer can be restored."
"All I can guarantee is that it’ll be substantial."
"Why don’t you avenge him yourself?"
Owin looked at Ruo Yan, his expression suggesting the question genuinely caught him off guard.
"I’ve already gone to the Greater World."
"So?"
"The rules have separated me from this place."
He pointed down into the darkness below.
"After leaving the cage, coming back isn’t as simple as opening a door. If my true body forced its way down, this world might not survive the strain."
Owin looked at the Necromancer.
"That’s his debt."
"And the trial meant for his successor."
"If you don’t want to do it, no one’s forcing you."
Ruo Yan gently tightened her hand on the puppet’s shoulder.
The flames in the Necromancer’s eye sockets gradually steadied.
"I’ll find whoever it was."
Owin smiled.
"I know."
The data streams around his body began to fade.
"There are still some items I left in this place. Materials, blueprints, a few unfinished puppet bodies, and some things I can’t even remember the use for anymore."
"You can use them however you want."
Ruo Yan asked,
"Is any of it dangerous?"
"Probably."
"Probably?"
"I left them here too long ago."
Owin saw the increasingly cold look on her face and immediately pointed at Ethan.
"Just use that guy’s eyes to check first."
Ethan asked calmly,
"You know about my ability?"
"I only know you have a rather interesting pair of eyes."
Owin pointed at the Primordial Armor.
"Oh, one last thing. If you ever reach the Greater World, you can use the Thunder Wings to contact me."
"How?" Ethan asked.
Owin gave a grin.
"You’ll know when the time comes."
Laira said coldly,
"That line again."
"Because explaining now would be pointless. When the Thunder Wings come into contact with the Greater World’s rules, the contact frequency will appear on its own."
The data on Owin’s body was dissolving faster.
He looked at Ruo Yan one final time.
"The inheritance belongs to you now. What you do with it is your business."
"Don’t try to become me. One Owin is already enough trouble."
Ruo Yan answered flatly,
"I have no intention of becoming you."
"Good."
Owin turned to Ethan and Laira.
"As for you two, try to stay alive a little longer."
"The Greater World is far more interesting than this cage."
Ethan asked,
"You’re not going to say a proper goodbye?"
Owin thought about it for a moment, then raised his hand and gave a casual wave.
"See you around."
"I’m off to keep traveling."
His data body shattered into countless points of light.
Just before vanishing completely, his voice rang out one last time.
"Open the Blind Box somewhere with a bit of space."
"I forgot what I put in there."
The purple light faded.
The void fell quiet.
Immediately after, the surrounding darkness pulled back all at once, revealing a massive storage vault suspended in the emptiness.
Crafting materials.
Blueprints.
Puppet Cores.
Unfinished weapons.
And hundreds of unlabeled boxes.
Ruo Yan looked at the trove of resources before her.
Then she slowly raised a hand to cover her forehead.
"Did I really inherit from someone like that?"
Ruo Yan stood motionless for a long time.
Before her was a stockpile of resources that would drive any Puppeteer mad. The Puppet Cores alone, floating in their preservation frames, outnumbered every core she had ever seen in her entire life.
But the person who left all of it behind was someone who had built a lethal pocket dimension on a drunken suggestion, then dusted his hands off, left the world, and went traveling.
Laira looked at the despairing expression on her face, and the corner of her mouth curved up.
"Is it too late to regret it?"
Ruo Yan lowered her hand from her forehead.
"I don’t regret receiving the inheritance."
She looked at the unlabeled boxes, then recalled Owin’s answer of "probably" when asked whether anything here was dangerous.
"I only regret that the one who left it behind is someone like that."
The green flames in the Necromancer’s eye sockets flickered briefly.
Ruo Yan immediately turned to look at it.
"You dare object?"
The Necromancer bowed its head lower.
Ethan didn’t know whether it truly understood her or was simply reacting through the Soul Thread. But after hearing Owin recount how this place came to be, he felt fairly certain the puppet was not entirely innocent.
Laira walked over to a rack full of metal components.
"Can we take all of it?"
"Not by normal means." Ruo Yan looked at the inheritance mark on the back of her hand. "But Owin transferred control of the data layer to me."
She placed her palm against the empty space.
Soul Threads spread from her fingertips, reaching the storage columns suspended in the void. Rows of purple symbols instantly lit up and linked together into an enormous magic array.
[Data layer ownership has been transferred.]
[Successor: Ruo Yan.]
[Inheritance space detected as approaching instability.]
[Transferring designated items to the Puppet Archive.]
The material racks dissolved into light one by one.
Blueprints, Puppet Cores, and unfinished bodies were all absorbed into Ruo Yan’s inheritance mark.
The process wasn’t fast.
The storage space seemed unable to receive everything at once. Several boxes emitted red warnings, forcing Ruo Yan to use Soul Threads to separate them from the rest.
Ethan opened the Eye of Truth.
[Box containing soul-corrosive solution.]
[Status: Minor leak.]
[Should not be stored alongside items with soul-based structures.]
He pointed to the right.
"Third box in the last row. Set it aside."
Ruo Yan immediately pulled it out.
[Incomplete Puppet Core.]
[Self-destruct reaction detected.]
"Preservation column up front. Second compartment."
The Necromancer reached out, removed the core, and placed it into a separate sealed zone.
Laira watched the two of them work with her arms folded.
"Looks like Owin was right. Your eyes really are suited for cleaning out his storage."
Ethan glanced at her.
"I don’t think that was a compliment."
"I’m complimenting you."
"Then there’s a problem with how you compliment."
Laira smiled, but before she could say more, the entire space suddenly shuddered.
Boom!
The points of light drifting around all lurched at once.
A black fissure appeared in the middle of the void, then rapidly stretched in both directions.
Ruo Yan looked up immediately.
"The transfer isn’t done."
The remaining item racks began destabilizing. Some blueprints broke apart into data fragments, and several blocks of material were wrenched from their positions by spatial forces.
Notifications streamed in continuously.
[Spatial core has been lost.]
[The final data layer can no longer be maintained.]
[Estimated time to collapse: Thirty seconds.]
Ruo Yan gritted her teeth and increased the volume of Soul Threads.
Silver-white strands wrapped around the last storage columns and pulled them toward the inheritance mark. Blood from the wound on her shoulder flowed again, but she didn’t stop at all.
"Grab the important things first." Ethan said.
"I know."
Ruo Yan scanned the item racks.
The three old puppet cores had already been safely stored. The Necromancer’s repair data had been transferred as well. The rest was valuable but not worth trading their lives for.
She yanked her hand back hard.
Every Soul Thread retracted at once.
[Transfer process complete.]
[Puppet Archive has been sealed.]
Crack!
The spatial fissure ahead widened.