The Polar Circle Empire was located a bit north of the Neo-Britannia capital. Darian, Niara, and the twins flew over the sea, and after a few minutes, they spotted a vast mountainous region with several small temperate forests stretching all the way to the horizon.

Back in the 21st century, this area — now part of the Polar Circle Empire — was seen as the far north of the planet, known for its harsh and freezing climate. But after the rise of the new continents, Earth went through many other geological changes.

The biggest one was the shift in Earth's axis. The Equator line, which used to mark the planet's center and had the hottest weather, moved farther north.

Now, the hottest region on the planet — and the new Equator line — runs through the center of the Aeternum Atlantis Empire. That change completely altered the climate across Earth, which caused a lot of problems. But today, things were stable and everyone had already adapted.

Because of that, the Polar Circle Empire wasn't frozen over; only its northernmost region still had that kind of climate. (See the map in the Auxiliary Volume)

The empire's capital was located near the central region, close to the border with the Solar Federation Empire and the Celestial Order Empire.

That city wasn't much different from New Arcadia Empire's capital. Unfortunately, after the rise of the empires, a rule was put in place: there had to be exclusive cities for High Humans and their relatives, and other cities just for regular people.

The twins had asked about that back on the plane. Darian sighed and answered: regular folks were forced to live in isolated and very poor cities, so their lives would be harder… He only learned the real reason later, after Meru explained it to him.

"What triggers people to awaken isn't as random as most people think. It's more about… a creative mind and a strong will. Going through a lot of hardship and pushing through it makes someone more likely to awaken. The more High Humans there are, the stronger Earth and the empires become. So yeah, making regular people suffer is totally on purpose…"

The twins were stunned, while Niara didn't show any reaction. In her universe, everyone had hard lives. Actually, that was pretty much the standard in every universe with power.

Centuries ago, Earth's universe wasn't like that, so people had more freedom to live their lives — maybe it could've even become a truly peaceful world. But everything changed, and with the appearance of the Spiritual Guardians came the consequences.

Lucy and Lucius took a deep breath. The problem wasn't the empire rulers. If Earth didn't produce enough High Humans, other planets would take advantage of it, and things would be way worse.

"The truth is, our whole universe is rotten. Everyone has to do whatever it takes to protect themselves, because there's no such thing as living free and without outside interference…", Lucius murmured quietly.

Darian nodded. With the arrival of High Humans and superpowers, chaos and the worst of humanity came too.

At that moment, the plane landed.

The door opened, and Amara appeared with a smile on her face. She and her father had returned earlier to let the family know.

"Come on, everyone's waiting."

She led them into the capital. After getting into a car, they drove to a western part of the city that was completely enclosed. That was already their home — one-fourth of the capital belonged solely to the Rorik family.

On the way, Amara explained that they were the strongest force in the empire, but the gap in power between them and the top clan wasn't that huge. For that special mission, five people from that clan had been chosen.

That single clan was just a bit weaker than them. That was because they had a Divine-level Spiritual Technique — the only one in the whole empire.

In the New Arcadia Empire it was the same: only one Divine technique existed. But in the Solar Federation Empire, there were two Divine techniques owned by two different clans.

Earth only had four Divine-level Spiritual Techniques… and the Immortal-level technique from the Wube clan didn't technically belong to Earth — it was theirs alone.

That family had been born on Earth and had a major base on an island in the Atlantic Ocean, but they hadn't really lived on the planet in a long time. Among the top 50 planets in the universe, they had bases and connections on all of them.

They ran all kinds of businesses — selling artifacts, pills, even auctions. Anything that brought resources and influence, they had a hand in it.

On Earth, they only helped maintain communication with higher planets out of… charity. Earth shouldn't have any influence or contact with powerful planets, but thanks to that family, it did. That gave Earth a different kind of status in the universe, even though it ranked only around the middle in terms of power.

That's why the planets Arjun and Zrook, from the Milky Way, never acted arrogant or caused problems. And why planet Aethel didn't ignore Earth's humans and tried to keep friendly relations. Basically, the Wube family was a very important source of support and protection.

In just a few minutes, a massive castle appeared in front of them.

Yeah, a real medieval-style castle — beautiful and gleaming. It was made entirely of violet and golden materials, which gave the place and everything around it a really unique feel.

The door opened, and Amara got out of the car, leading them inside quietly.

The three of them were tense, but once they stepped inside, they found themselves in a huge entrance hall. Inside, nearly fifty people were already waiting for them.

The three of them froze, unable to react. Niara gripped Darian's hand tightly. In that moment, Amara stepped forward quickly and joined the others.

Everyone there stared at the newcomers in silence. Emperor Nikolai was among them. A second later, everyone bowed their heads.

Then, all their voices echoed together in perfect sync: "Welcome, and please forgive us for everything."

"..."

After a short silence, the three of them sighed. Then quickly answered, also in sync, asking them to just forget about it.

People stood up and took a deep breath, nodding. That's when everyone started to relax and moved closer.

The older ones were the first to introduce themselves. The family was huge, with tons of cousins, uncles, and ancestors.

Soon after, everyone led them to a small gathering. They spent the rest of the day and night chatting, taking turns to talk to them. No one missed the chance to say how sorry they were for not being able to find their mother in time… how they got confirmation of her death — and just how sad and harsh her final moments had been.

That left everyone really shaken. Especially Amara's mother. Cirene was her sister, and the two were very close. That woman cried a lot while telling them stories about their mother.

Half of that family was made up of High Humans, but about a third were away — either on missions or training somewhere else in the universe. The arrival of those three caught everyone completely off guard.

At dawn, Nikolai entered the hall: "They must go. They've returned to the family, and now they should receive everything they deserve."

Everyone nodded and let them go.

Nikolai took them to a more isolated area of the castle. Inside, there was a huge library.

"In the back, there are dozens of workshops, with all kinds of tech and crafting methods. And in this library, everything our family has discovered and created is recorded," Nikolai said, looking each of them in the eye. "And also, here lies the core technique of my Polar Circle Empire. You have full access to read whatever you want. But there's not much time — tomorrow night, you need to head to that old woman's empire."

Nikolai explained how everything was organized, then left them alone.

Darian and the twins didn't hesitate and went straight to the empire's technique. They weren't sure if it would be useful, but no harm in studying it. They had zero interest in armor tech or anything like that — that just wasn't their style. They were already used to fighting like regular people and weren't about to change now.

Each of them took a copy of the Jade Slip and started studying.

It was just like Darian had imagined. A few centuries ago, the High Humans from that empire had received a mission in a really strange universe… one where robots had souls and were living beings. And also, all the regular folks used tech.

Their mission was to defeat a robot that wanted to rule over the living. It was a tough rank-A mission, but in the end, they won — and found out that robot carried a really ancient legacy.

It was something left behind by an android who was born in that world — they called her Elf-Droid Goddess Thea.

She actually fought in the final war of the past, side by side with the current Heaven's Will. So, the empire members took her legacy and made it their official technique.

Darian read the whole technique… but he felt something was off.

In the book he had read — even though it only had short, summarized chapters from the real history — there were some details about the soul jewel and the power that android Thea developed that weren't mentioned there.

The core that people from the empire created used soul power to form a single time. After that, it could receive the power of the ring and become the energy source for their tech.

But Darian… because he knew a bit more, had a bold idea.

His rings could fully control and dominate all three life energies. He used the base of the technique, but instead of only using soul power, he added mental power and vital energy too.

It wasn't hard. Honestly, it felt like the base technique had been left incomplete on purpose.

Within a minute…

"!"

A core made from all three energies was created.

Darian tested placing ring power into it.

It worked just like a regular core. But…

"This… isn't three times more efficient. It feels like over ten times," he muttered, deep in thought, then turned to Lucy and Lucius.

Using them as test subjects, Darian tried teaching them how to create it.

He explained it once… ten times… night came, then the third day began. But the twins really were talented and learned fast.

After lots of attempts and fine-tuning the method, the three of them found a setup that was easy to replicate. Then…

"Success!" Lucy said excitedly.

The two had created something nearly identical to Darian's.

Niara was watching with sparkling eyes, clearly thrilled by their excitement.

"Perfect," Darian murmured, then turned around and activated a device in the library.

At that same moment, Nikolai got an urgent alert and frowned.

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