All eyes were fixed on the figure that had suddenly manifested among the wizards, a form seemingly woven entirely from translucent energy. It had no lower body, only an upper torso that mimicked the rough outline of a human. Yet what troubled Lorian far more was the state of the wizards themselves.

The being, so unnervingly similar to a divine projection, did not strike. It did not even stir. It merely existed, hovering silently between the wizards. Its featureless face swayed faintly with the tilt of its head. That eerie stillness left Lorian and Bethany wavering. Should they attack immediately... or wait?

"We can't stall any longer. The wizards are clearly in bad shape. We need to drag them away from that thing."

The dwarven magician, less inclined toward hesitation, barked the conclusion aloud. Doing something was better than doing nothing. With a sweep of his staff, magic surged. A massive Hand of the Magus formed, splitting into dozens of spectral palms that shot toward the unresponsive wizards, ready to seize and pull them back.

But as they were doing so, the wizards, whose eyes had been vacant, suddenly made a move. What they did next shattered every expectation.

Void energy surged. In this region where the void and the material plane visibly bled into one another, drawing upon that power was effortless. With no delay at all, several chaotic black beams burst out from the wizards and lanced through the air. One by one, the conjured hands were struck and blown apart into drifting fragments of dissipating mana.

"Answer me—are all of you still conscious?!"

Bethany's voice cracked with shock. She had seen twisted elves in the Elven Kingdom and had fought them with her own hands. The wizards' abrupt behavior struck her like a warning bell.

"This shouldn't be possible," Lorian muttered. "Their mental shields—our mental shields—haven't been breached. There's no sign of any tampering. Then how...?"

Bethany's sharp questioning had already guided him toward the same dreadful realization. He could feel the mental ward laid over his own consciousness intact and untouched. And yet...

"We are perfectly lucid," one of the wizards replied, voice steady and certain. "We have simply learned the truth. Everyone... from the very beginning, our entire mission has been misguided. No investigation nor intervention is necessary. Their purpose serves all the intelligent races of the continent."

Bethany's brows furrowed. Her tone hardened.

"Such a sudden change in your attitudes cannot convince us of anything. Explain. What ‘truth'?"

Their gazes were clear, their posture composed. They didn't look as if they had been subjected to any stressors or pressure. And that was precisely what made this more terrifying than ordinary mental corruption: it went undetected until it bloomed fully.

"Justification? Fair enough. You lack the context," the wizard murmured, nodding as if in sympathy. "But don't worry. You will understand shortly."

He raised his hand. The other wizards mirrored the gesture.

"Defensive formation!"

Their intent was unmistakable. Fighting spirit ignited; magical wards flared into being. Every defensive method the knights and magicians possessed, they used immediately, layering the party in shimmering protection.

But no barrage of spells came. Instead, the looming "divine shadow" above them moved. A ripple of indescribable force pulsed outward, sweeping over the braced knights and magicians. Through it, the power of the utopia reached into their very souls.

Every barrier—fighting spirit, magical wards, mental shields—was ignored completely. The wave passed through all of it and sank straight into flesh, burrowing toward the spirit sheltered within. Its ease was unnatural, unreasonable, and so effortless that it defied every known principle of mental interference.

The first to fall were the magicians. The pulse flooded into their souls, and raw, overwhelming knowledge from the node was forcefully carved into their minds. Their strong, disciplined spirits buckled. They resisted, but the tide of power was too vast. Their defenses crumpled like wet parchment.

"G-Get out of my head!"

Paradoxically, the ones who resisted the longest were the warriors.

Gripping their skulls, their muscles knotted, their fighting spirit erupting uncontrollably, they held on through sheer will. The mental wards the wizards had crafted did nothing.

"You... What are you, really...?"

Lorian's consciousness cracked under the ceaseless assault. His resistance faltered. Strength bled from his limbs. In the haze, his trembling spirit glimpsed the entity reaching into them, its scale and nature. His voice shook with fury and despair.

"Just reclaiming what was always ours. Nothing more."

The words echoed, but he could no longer tell whether they came from the colossal gestalt entity or the wavering silhouettes of the wizards themselves.

In the next moment, Lorian's final defenses shattered. His will drowned in an ocean of foreign, incoherent whispers.

He had been the last to fall. With his collapse, every member of the investigation party was claimed, absorbed and rewritten, becoming one more consciousness within the boundless collective of the utopia.

Meanwhile, within the cursebinding spire, Wang Yu and Avia sat together and continued their discussion of Ethan Harris.

"In hindsight, we can be sure that Ethan Harris's final strike wasn't merely like void energy. He did draw upon the void. His own power was mixed with it." This time, Wang Yu did not dismiss what he couldn't understand. With Avia's genius at his side, they could finally probe deeper into truths that once lay beyond their reach.

"So you're saying that, after he uttered ‘I understand,' he suddenly gained a power capable of interfering with the void. Where could such a change have come from?"

Reviewing the combat data captured through the Perfect Fractal lens, Avia replayed the battle with Ethan Harris. She had already confirmed that the final strike he unleashed carried something extra—an element infused with the power of the void. Wang Yu, naturally, was curious where that power had originated.

"Wang Yu, you said it yourself. He attributed all of that strength to the concept of ‘swordsmanship.' So the breakthrough he achieved at the end must have been a further evolution of that swordsmanship. Perhaps... it was a kind of cognitive expansion?"

Avia pondered for a moment before stating her opinion.

"Cognition? Can a change in perception directly cause a change in power? That doesn't make sense. A knight isn't a magician. You can't just ‘realize something' and suddenly start channeling void energy. Granted, legendary knights can contend with wizardry using sheer physical prowess, so influencing it is possible. But actually drawing upon it? There's no record of that anywhere."

Wang Yu scratched his head, rifling through everything he remembered about knights. He came up empty. No account had ever suggested knights could use void energy like wizards unless they trained in both paths. Even then, the two powers remained separate.

As for himself, he was an outlier. The Chariot's power allowed him to forcibly wield void energy, but as he always said, he only looked like a knight. What he actually was... even he couldn't define. And he certainly couldn't just "comprehend something" and immediately wield new forces.

Even back when the Chariot's power evolved out of his ripples, the power had already existed; only the name had changed. Every change since then had required him to touch, learn, and grasp his new abilities on his own.

"So for someone to ‘realize something' and instantly manifest a new power, that power must have been there already. But where would a knight get a wizard's power? That guy didn't look like he'd trained in a second profession."

Wang Yu spread his hands. He refused to believe that the so-called "Sword Saint" also happened to be a wizard.

"A knight's inner potential and domain do resemble the void in some ways: they both exert influence on surrounding phenomena. But those forces arise from the knight's physical body itself. There's no real basis to classify them together. And with such fundamental research, there should be no reason scholars would have missed it."

Avia frowned. She stated the single tenuous connection between knights and the void: inner potential and domains. Even so, the link felt far too forced.

"Wait, Avia, that's not quite right. I... uh... no, that's not right either. My own void affinity is zero. But do you remember that old magician? He failed to become a full magician because his void affinity was too low, but he did have some. That means Ethan must have had some too. That should count as his connection to the void."

A sudden thought struck Wang Yu. Because of his own peculiar nature, he recognized the pattern instantly. He remembered Avia comparing the old magician's notes with Roland's copied manuscripts while trying to understand what void affinity truly was. No answers had appeared then.

"...You're right. Void affinity. I was too focused on whether he was a wizard. But even if someone isn't a wizard, void affinity is still a real, objective trait. Except for you, every intelligent creature has a connection to the void."

Prompted by Wang Yu's reminder, Avia immediately found the detail she had overlooked: void affinity, something she hadn't paid attention to since she reduced her use of wizardry to refine her magician's path.

Wang Yu had none at all, whereas her own void affinity was so potent even devils coveted it...

"Wizardry is even older than I thought..."

She considered the fragments of ideas she had read in Roland's notes and the existence of Roland's "key," a physical object that somehow possessed void affinity. Her thoughts grew increasingly tangled.

Wang Yu did not disturb her immersion. A message had just come through the Prayer Network from Charles: the alliance of intelligent races on the continent was inviting Aleisterre to join them. On the Church of Nightfall's side, the leader of the white dragons, Miselyx, and the silver dragon Aurelian were also asking for Wang Yu's opinion.

"...Eh? Why are they asking me?"