I pushed the door open and stepped into the hut. The scent of parchment and Essence ink greeted me.
Dante sat at the low wooden table, surrounded by maps, my maps, the ones I’d passed to him days ago.
But they weren’t as I’d given them. He had layered them with his own notes, fresh ink tracing lines between orbits, small symbols marking comets and belts, dotted arcs showing predicted movements. It looked less like a set of star charts and more like a living puzzle.
"You’ve been busy," I said, stepping closer.
Dante didn’t look up. "Your maps had more in them than even you realized," he said quietly. "I’ve been cross-referencing everything, star positions, gravity wells, old explorations, even rumors from the past."
I crouched down beside him, scanning the four maps. The first three were the human planets, drawn in their orbits around our sun, familiar terrain. But his added annotations caught my eye: faint marks over hidden mining fields, old debris zones, defunct colonies. He had connected them like a spiderweb.
Then my gaze went to the fourth chart. It was our entire solar system, the orbits etched faintly. A single region far beyond the outer planets was circled in red ink.
"You found something?" I asked.
Dante tapped the circled region. "This," he said. "At first glance it’s just nothing, no planets, no stations, not even a known asteroid cluster. But I ran old navigational data from the archives. The gravitational readings out there are... inconsistent. Something’s bending paths in a way that shouldn’t happen."
"Hidden mass?" I asked.
"Maybe. Or a cloaked station. Or..." Dante hesitated, glancing at me. "A pocket realm. There are myths about building anchoring points in deep space, places between folds where normal sensors can’t reach. The position marked here fits the kind of alignment you’d need for that."
I stared at the cross on the map. "So they’re not just interested in the human worlds. They’re setting up something at the edge."
"That’s what it looks like," Dante said grimly. "Either they’re moving something massive there, or something already exists and they’ve found it."
I leaned over the table, tracing the dark mark on the fourth map with my finger. "And whatever it is," I said quietly, "it’s important enough for them to draw their plans around it."
Dante nodded, his expression unreadable.
"Can we go there before they arrive and find out about this place?" I asked.
He straightened, folding his arms. "It will be difficult. The region they’ve marked encompasses a massive area. We don’t have the equipment to search it properly, and the ones we do have might not be suited for this task. More importantly, we don’t even know what we’re looking for."
"Why can’t we simply look for gravity anomalies?" I pressed.
"We can." His voice was short.
I waited, but he stayed silent.
"Then why not do that?" I asked again, irritation creeping in.
"Because the region is too big," he said finally, exhaling. "It would take time, too much time. We won’t make it before the Ferans arrive."
He pushed his body up and stood, staring down at the maps. "But what I keep thinking is... why would they align themselves with Saturn, Peanu, and even Sukra, but never reach out to us?"
"It might be possible it wasn’t the Ferans who found this place at all," I said, straightening up. "Maybe Saturn did, and then invited them in, struck some kind of deal."
We locked eyes.
"Interesting," Dante murmured, almost to himself. "So something Saturn discovered... and he’s sure the Ferans will take the bait."
I stood up as well and stretched, letting the tension roll out of my shoulders. "Anyway, why are you worrying so much? What will come will come. We’ll handle the Ferans when they show themselves."
Dante’s eyes flicked back to the mark on the map, his fingers curling around its edge.
"You don’t understand," he said quietly, his tone sharper than before. "How ferociously the Ferans will come for this place will affect everything."
I stayed silent, watching him, but his voice grew firmer.
"I understand you’re strong. I understand you believe you can handle everything. But you haven’t seen the world out there, Billion. Not truly. Out there, there are no morals, no principles, no rules beyond survival.
To live is the only creed, and to stand out is to invite your own death. If you shine too brightly, you’ll be surrounded.
And once they decide you’re a threat, they won’t stop. They’ll hunt you until you’re gone, or force you into hiding, wearing disguises, living like a shadow in some forgotten corner of the universe."
I stared at him. For a moment, I wanted to dismiss it, to laugh it off as paranoia. But the weight behind his eyes told me he’d seen this before. He wasn’t speaking from fear, he was speaking from memory.
"I’m not planning on hiding," I said at last.
Dante leaned forward, his gaze unwavering. "No one ever does at the start."
A heavy silence settled between us, the only sound the soft rustle of the maps on the table.
His words dug under my skin. I felt a flicker of anger, no, more like irritation, pricking at my pride.
It wasn’t just what he’d said, but how he’d said it, like I was still some reckless child with a hero complex.
My brows furrowed as the realization hit me: there was arrogance creeping in. I exhaled slowly, forcing the tension out of my shoulders, letting my hands unclench.
"All right, sir," I said at last, my voice steadier. "So what would you suggest we do to be ready for the Ferans?"
He held my gaze for a few heartbeats longer, then a soft chuckle escaped him. "For a second, I thought you were going to punch me."
A smirk tugged at my lips. "You’ll never know."
Dante tilted his head, smiling faintly. "I think the best thing we can do... is hide you."
I blinked. "Hide me?"
He nodded, completely serious now. "Yes. Until we figure out their plan, you need to stay among us like a normal, average Grandmaster, not the freak monster you actually are. No displays of overwhelming power, no drawing attention."
I tilted my head further, unsure if he was joking or testing me. "And how exactly do you plan on doing that?"
Dante spread his hands, his voice low. "By teaching you how to suppress everything, your aura, your talent markings, even the way your presence feels. If you can blend in, you buy us time to understand what the Ferans are after."