Through Elliot’s description, his expedition into the Mysterious Polar Garden unfurled before Yvette like a slowly unrolling scroll.
Elliot had come to the polar region with an investigative squad. Within the Gracebearers, ranks ran from S to D—five tiers matching different investigative difficulties. During the Blood Demon case he and his partner White Blaze were only a D-rank investigative pair; after earning some merits and improving their combat power they were promoted to C-rank investigators and took part in the operation.
Also in the team were an A-rank investigator as captain, a B-rank vice-captain, and two other C-rank members—each paired with a magitech automaton of corresponding grade.
When they found the Mysterious Polar Garden and prepared to approach, strange things began to happen.
They discovered the garden receded as they drew near, like a mirage on the far horizon.
After sprinting and flying for a stretch, the garden simply vanished; when they turned back, its shape had reappeared behind them. Even the analysis gear on their magitech automatons couldn’t figure out why.
So the squad deduced the garden’s entrance might lie somewhere in the area rather than being directly accessible.
Acting on that idea, they searched the ice plain and finally found, in a cavern under a glacier, a magnificent white gate carved with ornate patterns—strange creatures and scenes etched so intricately it was like a portrait of a world. The gate was huge; even three- to four-meter-tall magitech automatons could pass through it easily.
After touching the gate, it took little effort for the Gracebearers’ team to step into the dim world beyond. That place was utter blackness; light hardly traveled far no matter how they increased output.
Elliot and White Blaze advanced together until the darkness cleared and light returned. But when the surroundings came into focus he realized he’d been separated from his teammates—he had appeared in a strange place alone.
What met his eyes was a street where mechanical marionettes wandered—old in style, low in sophistication, movements stiff and unhuman, silent and unresponsive even to the sudden appearance of magitech automatons beside them.
Nearby rose a host of bizarre metal buildings; their facades crawled with pipes and bristled with metal obelisks. Runes flowed across them like streaming data.
Looking up, the sight was more terrifying: there was no sky, only a brass-colored mechanical structure—countless massive gears, bearings, and levers turning and meshing to form a vast mechanical star map. The heavy framework was streaked with rust and groaned as if it might collapse at any second.
No doubt this was a supercity of metal and marionettes; Elliot had likely arrived on just one layer. The mechanical star map overhead seemed merely a ceiling—there were still higher levels above.
After a moment of awe, the newly arrived Elliot and White Blaze didn’t immediately sense the problem; at first the scene only matched the marionettes’ mechanical aesthetics—except the residents were unnervingly stiff, lacking vitality, like constructs.
Attempts at communication failed. Elliot spotted a tower in the distance that looked like it led upward, but as he moved toward it he became lost.
To clear a path he fired the magitech automaton’s heavy cannon. A crude steam robot approached and warned him that weapons were forbidden here, even issuing him a citation.
That sounded reasonable—until, upon receiving the citation, Elliot and White Blaze were stunned to find their rune weapons failed. Checks showed no faults and ample magi-power, yet the weapons refused to function.
With their combat power drastically reduced, Elliot and White Blaze began a desperate survival in the Mechanical City. They discovered mana flowed through the building pipes and stole some to solve their power issue. After mapping the labyrinthine streets they trekked dozens of kilometers and finally found a towering pillar. Passing through that tower led them to the upper levels—but this still wasn’t the top,
and they had to keep searching…
Thus they were trapped in the Mechanical City for nearly fifty years.
They found each layer had its own unique order and rules—break them and the rules themselves would strike back. The enforcement methods were bizarre and beyond anything in their databases; honestly, even magic failed to fully describe the strangeness of those laws.
They also encountered magical constructs that looked like gears, bearings, or copper plates—patrol guardians that attacked outsiders. Fortunately, in some clashes they avoided getting cited and could still fight, narrowly escaping death a few times.
Eventually, after hardship, they climbed to the very top of the Mechanical City, saw a star-studded night sky, and broke through layer after layer of guardian constructs. From the edge of the topmost level they leapt.
At the instant of falling, countless strange lights and shadows flickered,
and when they plunged into a mirror-clear water strewn with floating little flowers, the vast city they’d left behind had vanished—only a delicate brass metal islet, like a miniature model, floated quietly on the nearby waves.
They swam underwater and came up at the edge of the Mysterious Polar Garden. Around them rose white high walls; at intervals each wall bore a gate guarded by statue-like magical creatures.
Under fierce assault from those magic guardians they forced their way through a gate and staggered back onto the ice plain, bloodied and spent. Exhausted and unable to fight any more, they were then set upon by a powerful aberration and broken on the floor of an ice-rift gorge—thus remained until the present.
When Elliot finished, Yvette and Abella fell silent.
Even immortals with broad experience like them had never seen anything so uncanny.
And the fact that stepping in could teleport you to unknown places—were those places interconnected, or did each person get their own isolated island prison?
Yvette had at first wondered if the site might be an Origin Civilization super-relic, but having personally visited the Origin Civilization she could be certain it lacked such technology—unless Elliot had not entered the real world but had used a vision device to enter a virtual network.
But then the problem was that Elliot and his partner were Machinists—could Machinists fail to distinguish a virtual realm from reality?
Moreover, the injuries they sustained in the Garden came back with them—genuine wear on parts and components—how to reconcile that?
Thinking this through, Yvette felt the Garden resembled the Dreammist a bit—but the Dreammist was a bona fide Origin World phenomenon.
This Polar Garden’s everything was so fantastical and lacking the weight of reality that it didn’t quite fit either.
“Master, do we really have to go into that place to look for people—” Abella said, trembling. For a divine scion, living was paramount; risking one’s life for so-called friends—what sort of thing was that for a scion to do?
Not even for your master, she added inwardly!
“Go take a look.” Yvette said. She hesitated a little but not as much as Abella.
Seeing Yvette still intent on investigating, Elliot tried to dissuade them—he clearly didn’t want the two to repeat his fate. But Yvette silenced him with a single question: “You planning to just go back like this?”
Elliot bowed his head. As Detective White Dove, the riddle was before him yet unsolved; as an investigator, the task lay ahead yet unfulfilled; as an ordinary Machinist, his companions remained inside and he could not save them. With allies either missing or dead, the result was unbearable.
“I’ll go with you.” Elliot finally chose. “But I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“You can use the equipment here to transmit information to the Sanctum,” Yvette said. “That way later arrivals will at least have your data for reference. We’re merely going to scout—whether we can enter is not decided yet.”
She was cautious by nature; without sufficient certainty she’d prefer merely to peek and then, if Ice Rain were still inside, have her wait another few hundred or thousand years until she was powerful enough to rescue her.
As a Machinist, Ice Rain likely had that lifespan…probably.
“Alright.” Elliot exhaled.
A few hours later, guided by Elliot, Yvette peered through the vehicle’s window and saw the Garden’s location.
From above it truly was a vast waterborne garden—a bizarre, expansive lake. The clear surface was dotted with tiny flower-beds and pavilions like drifting lotus leaves. In the center rose a pure, ivory tower—an immaculate spire that emitted a holy, tranquil glow in the dim polar night, like a white lighthouse.
She parked, stepped down, and Abella and Elliot hurried to join her for a distant view of the splendid sight.
But after only a few seconds, suddenly a white gate manifested before Yvette.
This gate was small—just large enough for a person to pass through—emitting a soft, immaterial glow. Without warning or external force, the pure white door silently swung inward, revealing a darkness beyond even deeper than the polar night.
Elliot froze and cried out, “What is happening?”
Yvette and Abella were surprised too. According to the Gracebearers’ investigation results, the entrance usually required time to locate; the Garden itself was only an illusion and its true body might not even be here.
So why, the moment Yvette stepped from the vehicle, did the gate appear of its own accord—perfectly placed right before her?
Is the Mysterious Polar Garden inviting them?
Book 2: Chapter 145: Invitation
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