Leaving the Silvermirror Continent, Yvette didn’t fly straight back to Ish Island. Instead she chose the route: Jadeite Continent, the Polar Regions, Blacktide Continent, then Ish Island.

She treasured those two continents without monarchs all the more now, planning to do a bit more “sustainably unsustainable” harvesting before any monarchs were born—and to swing by the Secret Garden to see whether that locked door could be opened.

Three years later, after crossing the Jadeite Continent—where aberrant resources were already all but exhausted—Yvette visited the Polar Regions again and reached the Secret Garden’s entrance.

What startled her was that, for reasons unknown, even the Garden’s door itself was now bound in those dark-red chains; it wouldn’t even let them approach, much less enter.

She moved closer and struck with her Shadow-Tendrils. The result was more pronounced than before, but still nowhere near enough to sever the chains.

Abella tried as well, channeling her proud, corrosive black mana—what she called venom magic.

Same result. In fact, it barely registered at all. After corroding for ages, it only pitted the surface like the moon; the instant she stopped, it restored itself. Abella nearly died of rage. In the end she switched to brute force—punches and kicks to no avail—then decided to call it quits and, with a haughty sniff, acknowledged the chains’ strength.

Thus the Secret Garden trip ended in failure. They cleared some polar-specific aberrants along the way; together with three years of mosquito-leg gains on the Jadeite Continent, Yvette scraped another 2w aberrant mana—barely enough for two more Flesh-and-Blood Waymark swaps.

Next came retracing Blacktide. In theory she could have spent another dozen years, but Yvette was watching the clock: after seven years of sweeping, she called it and headed straight for Ish Island with Abella and Ice Rain.

The reason was simple—once those seven years passed, she would have truly hit a full thousand years since crossing over.

She didn’t know how old this body actually was, but it didn’t stop her from feeling the milestone deserved marking—with a birthday feast for herself.

A millennial birthday!

E

Back on Ish Island, Yvette set her millennial banquet for a calm summer night.

“Banquet” was a big word for three people—including the birthday elder herself—so there was no grand occasion; in practice it was just a small table set in the courtyard for a simple dinner, nothing more.

The head chef, of course, was Abella; after years of maid training, her cooking was quite good.

Soon, though, Ice Rain enthusiastically joined the prep, intent on pitching in to give Miss Good Samaritan a surprise—though a mechanical golem couldn’t eat like a human, she still had plenty of Origin-era knowledge and a keen interest in cooking.

So there Yvette sat at the outdoor table in the manor grounds, the evening breeze cool and soothing after the day’s heat. Before long Ice Rain came over carrying a pot. Yvette blinked. “What’s this?”

“My original recipe! Miss Good Samaritan, guess what dish it is?” Ice Rain set the pot in front of her.

Yvette leaned down and studied it. Under the night, the Rune Lamp’s warm amber halo gave the food an uncanny sheen. Peering through the unopened clear lid, she scrutinized it for a while, then ventured, “Is it… grass jelly?”

It really looked like an ice jelly dessert—black cubes floating in a milky liquid.

“Nope.” Ice Rain had learned many mysterious exotic foods from Yvette, so she wasn’t fazed; she shook her head.

“Tofu casserole?”

“Oh! Very close!” Ice Rain said, delighted.

“So what is it?”

“Ta-da—durian-and-cheese stewed stinky tofu!” Ice Rain lifted the clear lid. At once, a mighty stench geysered from the pot—like a septic tank going off. Yvette instinctively cast wind magic to blow it across the table—right as Abella stepped out of the house and took the full blast to the face. She gagged and snarled, “…Who’s stewing crap?!”

Yvette glanced at Ice Rain.

“Uuu…” Ice Rain was crushed.

Ten minutes later, after inspecting everything Ice Rain had prepped in the kitchen, Yvette—putting health first—revoked her sous-chef privileges. Deep-fried sugarcane, century-egg tarts, chocolate-marshmallow rice-noodle rolls—none of that looked remotely like food meant for humans.

A bit later, the banquet officially began. Three glasses filled with fruit wine clinked beneath the stars with a crisp cheers.

Partway through, Abella flashed a toadying smile and said carefully, “Master, um—you know I’ve always been loyal to you—”

“Spit it out.”

“Well, I want to go back to the Blacktide Continent and make new contributions in your name—”

“—” Yvette gave her a look, sighed inwardly, and nodded. “Do as you like.”

She figured Abella really was a bit ‘noob yet loves to play,’ but Blacktide had just undergone her mass clean-up—new season, reset ladders. Going back now would indeed put Abella back at the same starting line as the other commanders. Especially with a full set of five grimoires—her power had climbed.

“Woo!” Abella lit up at once.

Just then, Ice Rain—who couldn’t taste food at all and was nursing a drink to pretend she was dining—said, “Um, Miss Good Samaritan, I have something to tell you too.”

“Another secret dish you haven’t brought out?” Yvette eyed her warily.

“Not that.” Ice Rain puffed her cheeks in protest, then grew solemn. “My main body is sending you a birthday present.”

“A birthday present? What is it?”

“It’s almost here.”

“‘Here’—” Yvette rolled the word on her tongue, then suddenly looked up into the deep night.

The next second, as if a god draped silk across the Milky Way, a magnificent aurora unfurled before her, spanning the entire firmament and pouring down in a billion streams of light.

1：

The next morning, dew beaded on the grass. The air, long-missed, was damp and chill—like the cusp of summer slipping into early autumn.

In the manor yard, Yvette watched Abella climb into her vehicle to depart Ish Island, but her mind was still on last night.

When the God of Machines presented the aurora as a gift, she could finally be sure: the unease she’d felt about the auroras’ appearances wasn’t baseless—the auroras themselves were unreasonable.

There are no coincidences—there never were. Why were the two auroras Rosalyn Sien encountered so close together? Why could the Witch of the End summon hillsides of Remnant Abyss on Doomsday? The cause behind it all was, as expected, the God of Machines.

Which meant He’d been watching her since even earlier?

Rosalyn’s arrival and departure—were those His doing too?

Not that it mattered now. With her Flesh-and-Blood Waymark delivered to the other world, she had the ability to traverse the two realms. Aurora or no aurora, she could simply swap.

With that thought, Yvette drew back her gaze and looked at Ice Rain beside her, speaking solemnly: “I don’t know how long this trip will take—maybe long, maybe short—but in any case, I’m leaving the manor in your care.”

Ice Rain nodded earnestly, a touch of loneliness in her face.

Then, watching the magitech bike dwindle toward the horizon, Yvette took in the manor bathed in morning light and bade Ice Rain a soft farewell.

In the next instant, she triggered the Waymark exchange.

No dazzling light, no surging energy. The air in the courtyard seemed to ripple once without a sound; Yvette’s figure vanished without a trace. When she came to, she was standing on a riverside at sunset. Nearby, a small river glittered and chattered; in the distance rose clusters of houses, and great windmills turned slowly. In the fields, golden wheat swayed in the evening breeze, flowing with bountiful radiance beneath the setting sun.

The air was rich with floral and grassy scents; a lilting bagpipe wandered in on the wind—carefree, sprightly, as if an improvising bard were telling legends of far-off places in notes.

Breathing in this everyday warmth so unlike the Land of Endings, she smiled gently.

She thought: a new journey has begun.

(End of Volume Two)

Volumes One and Two were originally a single unit: the four disciples + the Origin Civilization + the Land of Endings—this is the opening of the whole book and the stage-building phase. After finishing Volume One, it felt just right, so I split it out. As for Volume Two… writing it was straight-up hell difficulty.

It’s wild to think that in my pre-book planning I believed this 530k-word chunk could be done in 200k.

Even after burning 100k on Volume One, I still thought the remaining 100k would cover Dugrabi, Lant, Moga, the Machinefolk, the Origin-Civilization dream arcs, and the Secret Garden—me, a “genius,” really thought that page count would suffice.

If you noticed the final Jadeite Continent dream felt denser, that’s because I was in a panic. You wanted to change zones faster—so did I.

So I cut the Silvermirror Continent dream and reworked the Jadeite one. Rush in, grab the intel, and bail.

I also didn’t dare have the protagonist hop to the other world and then cut back to serve up more Dream Fog instances. As long as we haven’t switched zones, there’s no comparison point and I can power through. If we’d moved to the other world and I still handed you Dream Fog instances—whether you could read it or not, I definitely couldn’t write it.

The headaches in Volume Two weren’t just the Dream Fog instance designs; there was also massive time scale and space scale. Brutal. Space was manageable; time wasn’t. In the end the only way was to wheel out Abella and pad the transitions with some slice-of-life.

Even so, it still lacks that weight of time. That’s on me—last year’s concept was built around “hunkering down for a thousand years” as the core. Other spans? Ten millennia is too long, a century too short, five hundred years okay, but “a thousand” just feels right.

Anyway, the slow-burn phase is finally over. For crying out loud, a 530k-word “prologue” is a far cry from my dream of “finish setup in 200k, then, on the very day it goes premium, kick off the other-continent journey.” Is this the gap between fantasy and reality?

There’s more I want to rant about but it’d spoil things, so I’ll leave it. We’ve made it through. I’ll write a reflective post after the book is complete. Taking a day off to draft the detailed outline for the next volume.