Noticing Zane's gaze, the woman watched his retreating figure. Instead of anger, a smile spread across her face.
"Ah... that look—how perfect... truly magnificent. How could such a thing exist in this world…"
Her hands clasped together over her chest, lips slightly parted, eyes shining with intoxicated admiration.
Not far away, Shin's expression darkened as she glanced from the departing Zane back to the woman. With an exasperated sigh, she strode toward her.
"Enough with the theatrics. I told you who the Fire Picker is so you could help, not so you could indulge in your weird obsessions."
Shin's warning went largely ignored. The woman in the wheelchair remained fixated on Zane's fading silhouette. Only after Shin repeated herself did she finally blink and turn her attention back.
"I know, I know. Don't worry."
"But—can we discuss something?"
She nodded lightly, then turned her glittering eyes toward Shin. Seeing that look, Shin raised an eyebrow.
"What are you scheming this time?"
"You're about to fight him, aren't you? I want to see the Fire Picker's true form. You know I've always preferred that over the human one... and I've never seen it with my own eyes."
As she spoke, her usually cool expression softened. She coughed lightly, looking almost bashful—an odd contrast to her earlier poise. Her fascination with the Fire Picker was clearly impossible to contain.
After all... such perfection could only be called a divine creation.
"If you're not afraid of dying, then by all means—go ahead."
Shin didn't bother refusing. Her tone remained flat as she turned and walked off in the direction Zane had gone.
In the distance loomed the massive hollow.
And that was exactly where Zane was headed.
...
"This hollow..."
Before the colossal void, Zane gazed upward, its height stretching beyond sight. He lifted a hand and pressed it gently against the hollow's outer shell.
A strange sensation coursed through him. Zane's brow furrowed slightly—he could clearly feel the pulse of spatial anomaly energy.
The interior of the massive hollow was still a mystery. Before he'd arrived, the Falkenhayn Mercenary Troupe had already conducted reconnaissance missions.
Yet every single squad had returned with nothing—because none had managed to enter the hollow at all.
The moment they crossed the outer shell, they weren't transported inside. Instead, they were scattered across random regions of Hollow Zero, as if they'd hit an invisible web of spatial fractures.
And these "spatial fissures" covered the entire exterior, sealing it completely.
"But that's not really a problem for me," Zane murmured softly.
Slowly, he extended his will, wresting partial control of the spatial energy laced across the shell from the hollow itself.
As he gained command over it, a shimmering "gateway" materialized before him. Without hesitation, Zane stepped through.
In an instant, darkness swallowed him whole.
When a faint light finally pierced through, Zane opened his eyes—and the sight before him left him momentarily speechless.
Inside the hollow stretched a world of chaos.
Unlike the other hollows he'd entered, this wasn't a chaos of anomaly energy—but a physical one.
Everywhere he looked, shattered ruins of buildings drifted through the air. Several small floating islands hung suspended nearby, as if the ground had been torn apart and scattered into the sky, never to fall again.
Beyond the visible debris lay endless white expanses in all directions, blurring the concept of distance or horizon.
Zane stood suspended in midair. Looking back, he noticed the entrance he'd come through—it shimmered faintly darker than the surrounding space.
But that dimness quickly dissolved, devoured by the surrounding white light until it became indistinguishable from the rest.
"So it's not me manipulating space... but the space itself supporting me? This hollow's even stranger than the mobile one."
Zane took a few steps forward—walking on air without channeling any anomaly energy.
It seemed this hollow wasn't just chaotic—it was aware, almost as if it had a will of its own. Like the mobile hollow before, it defied the logic of any ordinary hollow.
"I thought there'd at least be a fight waiting."
He had assumed, just like with the mobile hollow, that someone was tampering with it—likely Tyce. He'd already been prepared for a confrontation.
If they clashed, he didn't necessarily need to capture Tyce... but a little information extraction would've been nice.
After all, during his earlier talk with Shin, the man had dodged every question, switching topics with infuriating ease—and whenever pressed, he'd simply played dumb.
It made Zane want to...
pluck out a few of his feathers.
But now, scanning his surroundings, there wasn't even a place for an ambush—let alone an enemy.
No ambushers. Not even any Ethereals.
Shaking his head, Zane sighed softly. He was already here, after all—he might as well make the most of it.
Stepping forward, he began exploring the hollow.
With each step, waves of Ether energy gathered around him, almost affectionately. Yet, oddly enough, he found he couldn't control them.
Feeling their eager presence, Zane raised an eyebrow. He began channeling his own Ether energy, comparing it against theirs.
Time trickled by as he studied the strange Ether while continuing his search for the hollow's core.
When he finally reached a large building where the Ether concentration was at its peak, a voice suddenly echoed in his ears.
"Come."
Zane paused mid-step.
That voice—it belonged to the woman from the consciousness microcosm.
He thought for a moment, then decided to check it out. Who knew what she wanted this time?
Calling forth the hollow's energy, Zane found a fragment of ruins to sit upon and entered the microcosm once more.
...
"Contact complete. Preparation's ready."
Deep within the mid-levels of Hollow Zero, Tyce stood in an empty expanse. Beneath his feet yawned the vast crater left by the Test Tower's explosion.
His complexion—and indeed, all of his skin—had turned an eerie, unnatural white. Strange lines etched across his body, and Ether crystals had begun to grow from his flesh.
At this point, save for a vaguely human silhouette, there was hardly anything human left about him.
In his hand rested a small, pitch-black sphere.
It was an artificial hollow—the culmination of the Academy's exhaustive research, created through the consumption of an immense amount of Ether energy.
Unlike natural hollows, it was a one-use construct—its activation cost indescribably high.
The previous mobile hollow, the current massive one, and the one now in Tyce's grasp...
All were the same.