Cerulean's eyes were closed, taking a big chunk off an apple in her hand as she squatted near a rocky cliff. She could just hang her legs over the cliff, but she preferred to be on the move rather than sitting still, and this was her favorite position.

The succulent juices coming off the yellowish-red apple trickled down her lips as the system energy coursed through her body, trampling down the already crushed stat blocks even further.

She picked up this attribute fruit from a nearby tree that she found, which had a nasty creature guarding it in this faraway place from civilization. This place was in the smack-dab middle of the Forbidden Plains, a continent filled to the brim with countries riddled with powerful monsters, and where each country had their own powerful monster leader to rule in.

She took another bite of her prize while staring at the creature in question.

The creature she slew wasn't a leader, but if anything, it was pretty large. About 30 or so feet high and wide of muscle and scales. Its arms alone could crush a fortress tower with ease, even with all the enchantments and runes that could power its durability.

Considering that the thing was a Master-rank monster, that made sense, and it wasn't one of those recently made Master-ranks, but a truly old monster, that might even give her father a run for his money.

Not that it provided that much fun for her. In this area of the world, mana was condensed and far richer and denser than any ordinary person can even handle, so monsters like these were numerous. The only reason why they don't go out of their way to crush any number of smaller countries and independent cities is largely due to the lack of powerful mana residing there.

Though if Arcelot was still in this plane of existence, every single monster on this side of the world would gladly charge towards it. They would reap any kind of source that could fill them with power as well as all the people living there since it was filled with mages. It was one of the reasons why Arcelot remained in their own personal pocket dimension.

Cerulean wanted to try this place out, only to find out that all the myths she gathered throughout her travels were pointless. This place was powerful, yes, but not that impressive. If anything, everything here was just aimless.

Now, if this area was to have any aspected mana, such as Fire or Water, then perhaps this place could be a lot more dangerous. However, the area is filled with nature-aspected mana as well as life-mana, making this place perfect for all sorts of life that could withstand the density of the mana around here.

In other words, monsters with particularly powerful abilities or interesting powers couldn't exist here. They would find it too stale and go somewhere else, where any number of natural treasures could be found and channeled by living there. She can't blame them. The only interesting thing here is the attribute tree she found, and even then it was the sort of tree that can only last for another decade or so before it fades away into obscurity. If it were a biodome-based tree, that would stay forever, but unfortunately none could be found around here.

"What do I do now?"

She made it a habit of going anywhere she can to find something interesting, something to bite her teeth into. Unfortunately, the apple wasn't enough.

Neither was the Vritra Templar Lord that she slain just a few minutes ago. Despite its powerful name, the creature was just big and slow. The only skills it had was having a tough hide and a strong regeneration. Other than that, it only swung its claws and used its mouth like a savage. She met literal goblins with more grace than this thing, and they were even lower-level than the creature.

Still, it wasn't anyone's fault but her own. She raised her expectations too high after hearing about this place from some run-of-the-mill bar she would frequent for a drink. The bartender there had a skill that made her drinks in such a way that made it worthwhile, and some drunk men were talking about this place as though it was filled with legends and treasures alike.

Boy, would she like to talk to them about the real difference between legends and a waste of time. But in the end, she was taught not to put down others for their weakling perception.

After all, she was born high-class through and through. From the start, she knew that there would always be something bigger and better out there, and she needed to get strong enough to handle that. Still, she can't help but be dissatisfied at the lack of excitement of this place.

"I could just go back," She said, talking to herself as that was her habit through her solo adventures. "But then where to next? Man, I wish something interesting would happen."

As though the gods granted her wish, a spark of familiar mana entered her sphere of perception. Through her skills, she recognized something was appearing out of thin air even before it could actually appear, and that mana was none other than the very person who would often contact her whenever they could.

"Mother, huh?" Cerulean raised a brow. Her mother would often send letters to her to the point of becoming a bit overbearing. She would never disrespect her mother–who would?--but she did ask her not to send her letters unless something interesting happened.

She would, however, limit it to just one a month, as reading letters on a daily basis was starting to become a burden for Cerulean. Especially since she had no idea what to reply back otherwise. Sometimes, she would just spend days sleeping because she can.

It's too embarrassing to tell her mother she did only that. Even more so when she often slept with other people.

But this time, this familiar mana was not her mother's. No, it was someone more surprising. Her father.

Before letting the letter arrive naturally through its transportation, Cerulean curled the mana with her fingers, forcing it to appear fast enough for her to rip the letter away from the transportation and read the contents.

It was indeed her father, which was rather surprising. The two didn't have a bad relationship, but she always knew her father to be more strict than her mother. He would only put on his playful persona to the higher ups to piss off the old bags at the noble houses. So if her own father was contacting her, then clearly it was something important.

After reading the contents, her eyes widened.

"Otherworlders? Towers? Messing up the natural flow of mana? In Arcelot of all places?

She read each term out loud as though trying to force-start her brain to remember them all. However, even if she lived a few long years, she had never heard of any of this.

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And the fact that her father, of all people, was willing to take in strangers from supposedly other worlds…

A grin flashed on her lips as she stood up, her energy spiking like never before. This was even better than the small chance of some sliver of excitement.

Her father of all people wanted her help. Her help. If he was that desperate for her help, then this can only mean one thing.

"Finally… finally! Something new! Something unknown!"

She spread her arms wide, and ethereal wings of golden energy spread across her back right after. Her long red hair, similar to her mother Anabelle's, streaked wildly as the wings flapped behind her back, taking her afloat despite her heavy plated armor covering her fit body.

"Something exciting!" She shouted at the top of her lungs, throwing away the half-eaten stat fruit and flying across the plains at breakneck speed.

It didn't even take Cerulean a moment for her to cross entire countries. Normally, such a feat would be impossible even for anyone capable of flight. That was largely due to the monsters that inhabit the sky as well as the air above it, close to the stratosphere.

Cerulean herself actually wanted to head deeper towards the stratosphere, perhaps off of this world, but her father made it clear that such an area was too dangerous even for her. Not even Grand Masters would dare venture off world without some form of protection or reason.

In fact, the birth of the Studded Star above the sky was the reason for that, as its mana density completely transformed any entity living near it to become stronger than was naturally possible. Still, that didn't stop Cerulean from dreaming about venturing off world to head up where the stars existed. Perhaps there were other places out there that were new and exciting for her.

But for now, she's satisfied just finding something else to work on at her current stage. Eventually, she reached towards one specific location where she knew Arcelot was residing.

Arcelot doesn't actually exist on this physical world, but instead living in an entirely different dimension that was tacked onto this world through the mana leylines that exist everywhere around them. But for Cerulean, entering and leaving that pocket dimension was easy; all she had to do is find the source of Arcelot within the real world through those very same leylines.

Her eyes glowed as she took a peek at the deeper confines of the world, where only energies reside. It wasn't just the natural life, kinetic, and magical energy. Everything existed there, and anything beyond that as well. For some, doing this kind of thing was staggeringly difficult, but Cerulean managed to find a trick to use it to find the very home she was born and raised in.

Through that, she spotted the leyline that connected to her home, and followed it straight towards where she believed the source of Arcelot to be. In her sight, she saw strands of peculiarly deeper blue magical energy that coincided with a large amount of force that seemed to span across several miles away from her sight.

Still, she did reach the location she wanted to and turned off the skill for her eyes. Staring at nothing but the clear dark night sky around her, finding herself in the middle of nothing but dirt and rock everywhere below her, her hand rose in front.

She breathed as she normally would, pulling out the attunement she had been perfecting for years. Her hand slowly turned to the left, as though turning a door knob.

Her attunement spread out like a link to the large empty area in front of her, and the two connected like chains. She balled her hand into a fist and pulled with all of her mental and physical might.

The empty area that showed nothing earlier suddenly sparked and flashed, revealing a round entrance made of pure energy. To the normal eye, it would appear to be a glowing blue portal, but to Cerulean, it was constantly shifting and turning into several types of energies all at once, connecting everything to nothing at the same time.

In response to this, the air around her furiously tumbled outward, creating a vortex of powerful force and energy colliding each other from this unnatural break-in.

Cerulean knew there was a better way of getting into Arcelot… but she found this not only faster, but great for pissing off the noble lords. Maybe her father too, but she believed he'll forgive her. Maybe.

Either way, she plunged herself into the portal, forcing the portal from the outside to destabilize and contort. It closed itself, causing a ripple of powerful energy to explode outward, nearly leaving a crater on the ground from the force as though it was pushed down by some powerful invisible fist.

See, that's why she went somewhere that was completely empty rather than being in the middle of the ocean ruining the natural structure of the world, and especially being in the middle of a bustling town.

Her father should be proud that she took all that into account before entering, right?

…..

About an hour into entering Arcelot, Cerulean found herself in a bit of a bind. Apparently invading through the confines of the pocket dimension set off some alarms, causing some of the anti-invader automatons and golems to come after her. Once she destroyed them, she continued on her way, though she remembered to tell her father about the situation. She didn't want to make those yellow-bellied nobles get all scared.

She could have just let them go rather than destroy those seemingly expensive and hard-to-acquire drones, but having them around like flies would just cramp her style.

She put on her spatial sight again, showing her the energies that encompass the world. It was just as her father wrote in the letter; everything around here was messed up.

The mana ley lines as well as the energies that bridged to all forms of life were in disarray. For an otherworlder, this would be like opening up an appliance to see mangled wires criss-crossed in every direction, not knowing which wire is which. For Cerulean's sight, it shouldn't ever be so.

The fact that everything in this pocket dimension was still working as it should was what really disturbed her. Clearly, an outside force put this thing all together, but it was as though that force just threw something into the mix and it eventually scattered apart.

Her mind was still trying to figure out the meaning behind all this, but instead of wasting her time reading through everything, she forced her attunement to find the source of all this calamity of the energies. It eventually led her all the way to a singular tower that seemed to spiral together all the way up to the edge of the dimension, which was definitely not normal to see no matter how many years Cerulean spent away from the dimension.

"You know, Dad, you should've told me just how fucking big this thing was…"

She murmured to herself, then reminded herself that otherworlders could be around her. She decided to stop talking to herself as she did have some form of decency to look refined to new people. Spending several months on her lonesome in those plains did not do well for her psyche.

There was also something else. This tower was not normal. That was already established earlier, but this time it was different. She knew it was a tower, or at least one of those deviant towers that acted like biodomes that seemed to have a will of their own, usually spotted at the higher-leveled zones in the bigger continents of this world.

But this particular tower surrounded itself in a dome of impassable force. Through her eyes, she spotted this dome that seemed to be completely white. She can't even see the energy that would belong to this world. Instead, she can only surmise that the system itself built this tower.

But for what purpose? She couldn't even tell what was going on inside the dungeon, and she made sure to study various deviant dungeons a long time ago, so such a thing shouldn't be possible.

"...Oh well."

Thinking was never her thing. That was her father's job. All she needed to do is to help those 'otherworlders' that her Mom and Dad are so fond of. Whoever these kids are, they are sure to be interesting to get their attention.

But this dome of emptiness was getting in her way. So, without further ado, she channeled her attunement to form what felt like a drill made of her own energy, completely invisible to the naked eye. Standing in front of the dome-like force, she grinned as she chucked the drill into the dome and forced it to get corrupted and malformed by her power.

But then she frowned. She tried pouring in more of her energy. But then she frowned again. The damn thing was taking a long time to crack.

"Oh boy…" Cerulean grumbled. "I should've kept that fruit."

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