The following days settled into a rhythm.
Essim and Aisha split their time between the Guandu Realm and the City of Life. In the Guandu Realm, they completed missions and managed the Seed Store. On the island, the WMA's civilian population passed a hundred thousand. Schools functioned. Hospitals were staffed. The entertainment district drew evening crowds. An Adventurer's Association dispatched hunting parties. Essim reviewed city reports daily — spatial planning, infrastructure, defence, education, health.
He'd hired Jarwis, a former city planner from Munich, specifically because the man thought in decades. The City of Life wasn't going to be a camp that outgrew itself. It was going to be a city designed for permanence.
Aisha had become the alliance's public face. Where Essim was strategist and resource engine, Aisha was diplomat, recruiter, and the warmth that turned strangers into allies. Her bond with Laras had deepened into genuine sisterhood — they shopped, trained, and strategised together. When Essim was unavailable, Aisha and Laras ran the alliance as a seamless pair.
One afternoon, walking through the City of Life's central park, Essim watched families picnicking. Children chasing each other around a fountain. An elderly man reading under a tree.
Two weeks ago, these people had been on Earth. Their planet was gone. And here they were — rebuilding, adapting, choosing to live rather than merely survive.
"Brother," Aisha appeared with two cups of tea, "you're doing that thing again."
"What thing?"
"The brooding-hero-surveys-his-kingdom thing."
"I wasn't brooding."
"You were absolutely brooding." She handed him a cup. "Drink your tea."
That evening, he sat on the balcony watching three moons rise. The Ascendant Realm's night sky was a canvas of impossible stars, some glowing in colours that didn't exist on Earth. The city hummed below. Music drifted from the entertainment district.
He thought about the crowned man. About Elder Wan. About the universe of realms and races that existed beyond this sky. About the Race War event — now twelve days old, seventeen remaining.
And he thought about what Aisha had said on the boat: Is it possible to bring the dead back to life?
He didn't have an answer. Not yet. But in a universe where cultivators lived millennia and Faithwardens achieved immortality through belief, the question wasn't absurd.
Somewhere out there, beyond portals and realms, there might be an answer.
He intended to find it. -e • • •
On the morning of the eighteenth day in the Ascendant Realm, Essim stood at the window of his fifteenth-floor office in the WMA headquarters, watching the sun rise over a city that hadn't existed three weeks ago.
Below him, the City of Life stretched to the horizon — stone buildings and cobblestone roads, defence towers and flower gardens, schools and restaurants and the tall spire of the entertainment hall. Beyond it, Laras's City of Light gleamed with holy energy, and Haikal's quieter enclave offered shade and peace to families and scholars.
Further still, the merged territories of the alliance's core members formed a landmass the size of a small European country. Five thousand troops patrolled its borders. Two hundred defence towers guarded its perimeter. Flying boats — constructed from duplicated blueprints — swept the surrounding void for threats.
A hundred thousand people called this place home. Human beings from dozens of countries, speaking dozens of languages, united by the simple, stubborn desire to live.
In the Guandu Realm, the Seed Store was turning a profit. The alliance's contribution points were climbing. The hidden mission for Elder Wan — two more Blessing Potions in exchange for a million contribution points and whatever mysterious gift the Pavilion Lord had prepared — ticked quietly in the background.
The event leaderboard showed Essim at fifth, Laras at eleventh, Haikal at thirty-first. William Anderson still held first, his Supreme Overlord title glowing gold in the global chat. But the gap was narrowing. Not because Essim was climbing — because the WMA as a whole was generating points at a rate that rivalled small alliances combined.
Essim's storage rooms held enough weapons, skill books, Crystal Cores, and consumables to equip an army of ten thousand Immortal-class warriors. His duplication talent had created a resource reserve that could sustain the alliance for years. The economic foundation was unshakeable.
But economics alone wouldn't win a race war.
The portals were growing larger. The conflicts beyond them were escalating. Reports from Haikal's team described Tier-3 Beast Masters operating in coordinated formations, supported by creatures whose attributes exceeded ten thousand. Laras had encountered a Faithwarden whose domain of light covered five kilometres. Grey had sent a message warning of rumours — unconfirmed — that Tier-4 beings existed somewhere in the Guandu Realm's deeper conflicts.
Tier-4. A power level that made Masters look like children.
Essim closed the report and turned from the window. Whatever was coming — whatever lay beyond the portals, beyond the realms, beyond the limits of what the system had shown them so far — he would face it the way he'd faced everything since the red panel appeared in his Berlin office.
With preparation. With his sister beside him. And with the quiet, unshakeable conviction that humanity's story in the Ascendant Realm was only beginning.
He picked up his coat and headed for the door. Aisha would be waiting at the portal, ready for another day in the Guandu Realm. There were missions to complete, stores to manage, and a universe to explore.
The road ahead was long.
But for the first time, Essim wasn't in a hurry. He had built something worth defending. Something worth growing. And he had the talent — and the people — to do both.
The door closed behind him. The city hummed below. And somewhere beyond the sky, the war continued.