After about an hour of testing, Sebastian gave Kyle permission to finally leave.
"Alright, I will be checking in with you from time to time," Kyle transmitted. "For now, I will be underground most of the time. Still need to finish my Law of Metal."
Sebastian nodded. "You know where to find me, and thanks again for all your help. I couldn't have done anything like this without your help."
"No problem," Kyle transmitted with a smile. "Well, see ya!"
"See you!" Sebastian transmitted.
Then, Kyle went towards the southeast.
He didn't want to get too close to the World Peak since he was not allowed to be there.
Well, he also wasn't allowed to be in the Winterfire Empire, but who cared about their rules? They wanted to kill him anyway.
Silvester and the Chief were not Kyle's enemies, which was why he didn't want to anger them.
As Kyle traveled to the southeast, he watched the icesheet above him.
'Wonder what's above this ice sheet,' he thought. 'Probably a bunch of Monsters.'
'Speaking of,' he thought as he looked around. 'There's not a single beast here. Wonder why.'
Then, Kyle got his answer as the icesheet came closer and closer until it touched the Metal-Earth Stone.
'Ah, that's why. Due to the pressure, there's probably just kilometers of ice above me. The beasts believe that there is nothing down here, which is why they are not digging through the ice.'
'This is an isolated space, created by the Anti-Ice.'
A moment later, Kyle ran into the sheet of ice, going through it like it was air.
He needed Metal Elementals, and they were not at this depth.
After several seconds of running through the ice, Kyle reached the Metal-Earth Stone.
Instead of digging into the stone, he simply walked on top of the rising slope.
He needed to rise about 20 kilometers to reach the Metal Elementals.
After he rose a couple of kilometers, he got out of the sheet of ice and came into contact with regular water again.
'Hey, there's normal water again.'
As Kyle's Ether Sense spread across his new surroundings, he realized something.
'Still no beasts?' he thought. 'I thought there were supposed to be a bunch of beasts in the ocean.'
Kyle continued walking up the slope.
Yet, just five seconds later, he stopped.
'What the fuck?' he thought in shock as he felt the Ether in front of him.
It was so dense!
It was so insanely fucking dense!
'What the fuck is that?' he thought as he looked at the dense Ether in front of him. It had the shape of a cylinder or conical pyramid, and it was huge.
As in, the part he saw was already over a hundred meters long.
While watching the dense bit of Ether, Kyle started to feel terrified.
His instincts were screaming at him that he was in mortal danger.
Then, the shape moved faster than anything Kyle had ever seen!
BANG!
A huge wall hit Kyle, breaking several of his ribs.
In an instant, Kyle reached speeds of over ten kilometers per second!
If his instincts hadn't activated his wind speck to make him immune to inertia, his insides would have been turned into unrecognizable goo.
Yet, even Kyle's green speck reached its limits and immediately became inert after dealing with the rapid acceleration.
Kyle shot through the ocean, his kinetic energy leaving behind a huge trail of steam.
A moment later, Kyle regained clarity, and he immediately activated Ignition.
He used all of his power to move downward.
BANG!
He hammered into the Metal-Earth Stone in an effort to escape.
This was a beast!
But how?!
This thing had such a ridiculous density of Ether that it easily eclipsed Emperor Winterfire!
Kyle knew that he was completely helpless in front of such a foe, but he still tried his best to escape.
He struck the ground again and charged deeper.
But then, he calmed down and stopped moving.
'If this thing actually wanted to chase me, I would already be dead,' Kyle thought. 'In fact, it's a miracle that I even survived that initial strike.'
'Considering the density of its Ether, even the simplest attack would have turned me into a thousand pieces.'
'But I'm still alive.'
'That can only mean one thing.'
'It didn't attack me.'
'It simply half-heartedly swatted me away like an insect.'
It took a while for Kyle to process this revelation.
'That's fucking crazy,' he thought. 'Actually, I'm lucky that I'm this weak in comparison.'
'If I were stronger, this thing might have actually attacked, but with my current power, I'm barely an annoyance.'
'No wonder there are no other beasts here. They all know how terrifying this thing is.'
Kyle looked forward.
'But I just went towards a random direction.'
'What would be the chances that I would meet the only powerful beast in the Grand Ocean?'
'Almost zero.'
'So, either I have abysmal luck…'
'Or there are a lot of those.'
Kyle wanted to take a deep breath, but he was still underwater.
'Holy shit,' he thought. 'The ocean is fucking scary!'
'Yeah, I'm going to avoid the wet part of the ocean. I accidentally walked into a high-level area.'
'Well, now I know,' he thought. 'I should dig.'
Kyle retrieved his hammer and started to dig towards the south.
Digging through the Metal-Earth Stone was not easy and took a long time, but it was better than going through the wet part of the ocean.
It took Kyle several days of trial and error until Kyle finally reached a depth of 50 kilometers without seeing any water.
'According to my sense of orientation, I should be about a hundred kilometers east of the western coast of the former Skysand Kingdom.'
'I think I should use this as my base of operation for now. I don't think many people are mining in the middle of the ocean.'
'There should be plenty of Metal Elementals.'
'Whelp, this entire intermission with the end of the war is over. Time to return to what I've been doing before.'
'Looking at Metal Elementals do stuff.'
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