The next moment—
They watched Lupotin draw from his breast a storage pouch woven of fine mithril thread. With a complicated look, he offered it to Reize.
"Young powerhouse," Lupotin said, his voice oddly calm—yet beneath that calm flickered irrepressible curiosity.
"Here are ten million mana stones. I, Lupotin, request entry to view your city."
Boom—!
If Reize's price had been a boulder dropped into a lake,
then Lupotin's act detonated the volcano hidden beneath it.
Everyone gaped.
Marquis Lawrence's jaw nearly hit the ground. He stared at Lupotin's back like one looks at a madman.
"He's insane! Backlash fried his brain!
Ten million mana stones just to 'have a look'?! Does that old fool think he can batter the city open with money?!"
Even Reize's face showed the faintest trace of surprise.
He arched a brow and took the pouch—didn't even probe it with spirit sense.
The near-fanatical hunger in the old magus's eyes said enough.
Reize nodded, stepped aside, and opened the way.
"Please enter."
Lupotin drew a long breath—as if stepping not through a gate, but over the threshold of truth.
He took one step, and the prismatic glow swallowed him whole.
That scene immediately set many representatives to itching.
Ten million was no small sum—but to be first to crack the crab? Perhaps worth the price.
With someone having gone ahead, the rest grew all the more agitated.
Just then, a voice cut across the murmurs.
"Fools.
Utter, irredeemable fools!"
Lawrence nearly leapt up.
He swung toward the other stunned delegates, voice going shrill with agitation.
"Gentlemen, I suggest we confer at once!"
"…"
…
Within the gate.
As Lupotin crossed the portal's rainbow sheen, he felt himself plunged into an ocean of pure energy.
First came the air.
No—this was beyond air. It was liquid mana, living power, a rich mist composed of the purest arcane elements.
He reflexively drew a breath, and that elemental tide—gentle as a stream—rushed into his manaflow and mana core.
"Huu—"
A sound escaped him, half sigh, half rapture.
In a thousand years, he had toured every mana-blessed site on Aresia—Starseer Tower's proud observatory, even the fabled elemental demesnes of legend.
Compared to this, those were dry riverbeds beside an endless sea.
In mere heartbeats, the Legendary bottleneck that had stalled for decades… loosened, ever so slightly.
It was absurd.
And his shock was only beginning.
The sky itself radiated life-giving light.
Beneath his feet lay a material he had never seen: warm as jade, yet glinting metallic, patterned with impossibly complex mana circuits.
Just standing upon it, he felt a gentle, constant current rising through his body.
"Magitech glaze-gold? No—the purity, the conduction… Celestial Star-Marrow?!"
Names found only in myth flashed through his mind; his heart hammered.
Paving the ground with materials Legendary Magi would kill for?
Monstrous waste.
Glorious, blasphemous waste.
He lifted his gaze—and was nearly drowned by the vista.
Towers that soared like mountain ranges.
Architecture saturated with a future far beyond the age and a mystery that was art itself.
Walls etched with three-dimensional rune-chains so profound that even he—a Legendary Magus—grew dizzy at a glance.
Runes moved like living things deep within the structures, layering composite defensive matrices and energy-siphoning arrays powerful enough to make him tremble.
This was not the work of hands.
This was miracle—creation sketched by a god.
Inevitably, his eyes were drawn to the central tree—a giant whose grandeur and beauty defied words.
Though kilometers away, he could tell its boughs roofed the heavens; its emerald leaves flickered with sigils of life; silver bark flowed with the cadence of time.
Merely looking at it cleared his mind as never before.
"Profligacy… beyond words!"
His heart bled—and laughed at itself. Was he trapped in illusion?
He forced his gaze down to the streets.
Crowds flowed—orderly, unhurried.
One sweep—and his heart nearly stopped.
A gardener in plain clothes, trimming arcane shrubs—his aura: Intermediate Magus.
A dwarf pushing a cart piled with exotic fruit—his presence: Lord-class warrior at least.
A cluster of youths in coordinated blue Academy uniforms—chatting, laughing, seventeen or eighteen at most—each already Senior Magus tier, eyes bright with confidence and hunger for knowledge.
"How… how is this possible?
Magus as gardeners? Those children—how old are they?!"
His worldview was being ground to paste.
Power that made one a royal guest beyond the walls—here, it seemed merely part of the civic bedrock.
Then what of the ruling strata of this city—how terrifying must their strength be?
He recalled the man at the gate with the thunderblade: before the pressure of so many powers, his eyes had not rippled once. Cold raced up Lupotin's spine.
The shopfronts finished the job:
Weapons, armor, jewelry all humming with power; legendary potions sealed in crystal, fragrant and alluring; scrolls inked with unknown knowledge—displayed openly, price tags neat and clear.
A tidal wave of shame—and of backwardness—crashed over him.
The Starseer Tower he'd once been proud of; the research he'd cherished; the "pinnacle" system of Aresian magic—
beside this city, they were a cave-man's doodles by the fire.
Crude. Childish. Not worth mention.
Now he understood why Dalton could name such an "outrageous" entry fee.
It wasn't arrogance, nor haggling.
They simply… were not in the same dimension.
Beyond the walls, powers still haggled over single mana stones and schemed over a lone Legendary's allegiance.
But Dalton Town, this city of near-myth—
already operated at a height they could not imagine, a civilization beyond their comprehension.
Lupotin stood dazed, whiskers trembling, his staff suddenly heavy as a mountain.
Under the weight of awe—and shame—a seed sprouted in him, ferocious and fast:
Desire.
To understand.
To breathe this air.
To learn this city's secrets.
To go farther.
In that moment, the pride of Starseer Tower, the dignity of a Legendary—he tossed them to the winds.
He chuckled at himself.
Those outside, still calculating and hesitating… they had no idea what stood before them.
The old magus slowly raised his hand, staring at the skin now glowing faintly with mana from a single breath.
A complicated light flickered in his eyes.
He whispered, for himself alone:
"This is the true starry sky."