The room slipped into silence.

Not the comfortable kind, but the thick, suffocating stillness that made the walls feel like they were pressing inward.

But Klein didn’t feel cornered.

Not yet.

There was still a way out. 

He still had cards to play, he just had to pick the right one.

With the woman’s sharp gaze lingering on him, he reached for the cup in front of him, his fingers rounded around it. 

Gently... 

He lifted it slowly, brought it to his lips, and downed the remaining tea in a single, quiet swallow.

A soft thud followed as he set the cup back onto the plate. His hands came to rest on his thighs, relaxed, too relaxed in her book. 

“It’s a good tea,” he said. “Really is a good tea.”

Esmeralda didn’t respond. 

She merely sat there, still as stone, letting the silence stretch.

Klein slowly lifted his eyes. Their gazes met, and then, he smiled.

Not the awkward grin he’d worn earlier, but something different this time.

Calm, poised, confident enough to cause the woman across from him to blink, just once.

“It was out of sheer luck, Miss…” he said.

“Esmeralda,” she supplied smoothly, motioning for him to go on.

He filed the name away in his mind.

“There’s a true Lord expert here.”

Just that. 

One simple sentence. 

And it was enough.

Esmeralda’s composure cracked instantly.

Her brows lifted, eyes wide with disbelief.

“True Lord expert?”

Klein nodded. “I’m afraid I can’t share the details. But it was thanks to that Senior’s help that I was able to reach the outermost layer, and eventually locate the altar that let me escape.”

"As for the authenticity of my words" he smiled, gesturing with his chin, "Your eyes would be able to tell, no?"

"I see... " She was caught clean, her eyes actually possessed a mean to tell between true or false. 

The shift in the room’s atmosphere was immediate. 

Esmeralda leaned forward slightly, her hands gripping the table’s edge. 

Her fingers tapped out an uneven rhythm, brows drawn tight in concentration. 

The calm she had worn like a second skin was unraveling, replaced by an expression far more human, concerns. 

Klein watched her silently, inwardly savoring the change.

It took her a few moments to collect herself. Understandable, really, after all, the mention of a true Lord was no small thing. 

A being like that hidden in this place?

Someone she hadn’t known about? 

Worse yet, someone who may have taken interest in this boy?

What are their relationships?

Plans had to shift.

“Human?” she asked at last.

“Human,” Klein confirmed. “Female.”

Esmeralda’s eyes flicked to him again, narrowing slightly as if to gauge how much he truly knew. 

His tone, his posture, the way he dropped the detail so casually, it was enough to make her hesitate.

Especially after she detected he wasn't lying. 

Then finally, she leaned back.

“You are free to go now.”

Klein’s lips curled faintly. “Thank you, Miss… for the tea.”

With a light nod, he rose from his seat and walked out, slipping through the door without another word.

Out on the deck, the old man was already standing near the door, waiting. 

His eyes trailed after Klein, stunned.

As the boy vanished from sight, he rushed into the room.

“Did the talk fail?”

“No.” Esmeralda shook her head. Her gaze didn’t shift, still fixed on the surface of her untouched tea. 

“We can’t touch him. There’s a chance we might end up pulling something far worse onto ourselves.”

“I see,” the butler murmured, his tone respectful. He knew better than to question her judgment.

And just like that, the meeting ended.

What they didn’t know was that someone else had been watching all along.

Hovering just above the front spiral of the ship’s deck, Mize lingered in the air, an ethereal little figure dressed in gothic black lace, her petite frame outlined by faint motes of light. 

Her hair fluttered silently behind her as the ship began to lift, gently leaving the dock and turning its bow toward the horizon.

She tilted her head, eyes thoughtful.

“Hm… So they’re heading toward the altar too?” she muttered under her breath

“Not bad. Makes sense. Being stuck down here would be... quite the pain.”

"They wished to establish a teleportation channel between the two point huh?"

The ship’s purpose was clear enough, it was heading toward the altar located near the edge of this colossal landmass Mize had created. 

"Island" hardly did it justice anymore. 

It stretched far beyond what anyone would reasonably call an island, closer to a continent, really.

The vessel glided through the air as if floating on an invisible sea, the sky beneath it rippling faintly like water disturbed by a breeze.

The flags fluttered in the wind, while a crowd of Awakeners leaned eagerly over the wooden railings, their eyes wide with awe as they took in the surreal panorama below.

A sprawling wilderness stretched out in every direction, vast, extremely vast.

Towering mountain peaks pierced the clouds, jagged and unmoving like a slumbering dragon curled around the earth. 

Forests blanketed the land in every direction, green waves rippling across the continent’s back.

"At their current pace, it’ll probably take a full week just to reach the edge of this place," Mize murmured, a hand scratching idly at her temple. 

Her lips curved into a wry grin. "Well... I did expand the size a bit"

She hovered far above, watching the ship drift forward in the sky’s slow embrace. 

Of course, she wasn’t planning to follow it around for the whole trip. 

She had marked it with her divine sense, an invisible thread connecting her to it at all times. 

With just a thought, she could return in an instant.

Settling cross-legged on the highest mast of the ship, she closed her eyes. 

A faint light shimmered beneath her lashes as her perception expanded, 1 thousand kilometers in every direction, unfolding in her mind like an enormous map.

Then, using her clones to see the rest, easily ten times the size of it's prior one. 

Yes, ten thousand kilometers. That was the new size of the island.

Elsewhere on the deck, Klein tilted his head, his brows pinching together. "Old man... does it feel like the place’s gotten way, way bigger?"

"Probably your imagination, kid," came the old man’s dry voice from the ring. "I’m pretty sure it’s always been this size."

"Really?"

"Really."

Meanwhile, Mize chuckled quietly to herself. "Welcome to a much bigger island dungeon."

The shape remained a perfect circle, like before, just... much larger. 

The three-layered structure still existed, but each layer had been drastically expanded.

 Monsters of every imaginable kind roamed its wilds, so many that not even a century of counting would be enough.

And maintaining this place? That job belonged to ten thousand clone units. 

Each one linked to the others like neurons in a single massive brain, working in perfect coordination to sustain the ecosystem.

Currently, they’d all taken the form of tiny, invisible light orbs scattered throughout the island. 

Their range and efficiency had improved drastically, especially when paired with Mize’s skill list, they could build, repair, modify, and monitor everything without a sound.

Their orders were simple: build and preserve, exactly as Mize willed it.

If she wished for more, they will create.

Beyond the central landmass lay a vast ring of ocean, ten times the size of the island itself. 

A thick curtain of fog circled the horizon, hiding the same defensive mechanisms from before. 

Dozens of tiny islands floated out there, scattered like seeds.

And in the depths of that ocean?

A different world altogether.

Sea monsters swam far below the surface, far too deep for average Awakeners to ever reach. 

Only true Lords could dream of exploring those trenches, where she had hidden peerless treasures, each one guarded by its own sea lord, a monster as strong as the treasure it protected.

Mize had pushed her limits during the creation process. 

Tier 8? That wasn’t a problem anymore.

 If anything, she was starting to question her own strength.

[Host, do not be concerned. While your tier denotes your combat capability, your profession’s greatest strength lies in creation. This is why there is such a vast gap between your innate power and actual tier]

She heard the system’s voice and immediately understood. 

Of course creation would be her defining trait, that had always been the core of her identity. 

Her one true path.

"So then," she murmured, her gaze sweeping across the vast landscape, "how powerful am I now?"

"Roughly according to you?"

Even as she spoke, she linked her mind with the clones positioned near the ocean, gathering data too far for her immediate senses.

The system replied. 

[Tier 8 to Tier 10, depending on how much the Host exerts herself.]

"Give me a proper estimate."

[Tier 9.]

She exhaled lightly. "I see... And what about Liam?"

That memory surfaced again, her fight with him in that strange space.

The massive golden eye. 

The overwhelming presence of a true body she couldn’t even fully perceive. 

The way she’d been completely outmatched...

And she didn't ask afterwards, an understanding between the two. 

[Peak Tier 10 – limited.]

Her jaw dropped slightly. "Tier 10? That’s such a huge gap... I couldn’t even land a proper hit."

[Host, that is normal. The higher the realm, the more unfathomable the divide between each stage.]

"And that ‘limited’ part?"

[That denotes the current maximum within the trial realm. The warp has placed a restriction on upper progression tiers, regardless of profession.]

[No one, nothing would be able to exceed the current limit]

Mize fell quiet for a moment, turning over the implications in her head.

"What lies beyond Tier 10?" she asked softly.

 A part of her knew, Tier 10 couldn’t possibly be the end. 

If anything, it felt like the start of something even bigger.

[After Tier 10 comes the Star Realm. One star to ten stars. These beings go beyond mortal limits and are known as Star Holders]

[Capable of destroying worlds. But even then, within the grand scale of the warp... they are as insignificant as ants.]

Her eyes lit up, the corner of her lips twitching upward. "Stars, huh..."

She stared dreamily into the sky for a few seconds. "Strong and insanely beautiful… one day, the infinite world’s gonna kneel beneath my heels."

And with a soft flicker of light, she disappeared.

A second later, she reappeared on the dungeon’s surface, scanning the land thoroughly for anything that might need adjustment.

Everything was stable. No problems.

Satisfied, she nodded once, then vanished again.

This time, she followed a particular divine mark she’d left behind, one that pulsed faintly near the territory border. 

A floating throne hovered silently in the air.

Beneath it, endless legions of shadow soldiers marched forward, colliding with grotesque monsters that surged in from outside the boundary.

And seated atop that throne, Liam.

Around him, a dozen figures floated silently like silent guardians. Human in shape, but far from human in essence.

Don't be fooled. 

Their appearances were fake, but their nature had already transcended.