Adrian’s decision was set in stone: all production lines would pivot to crafting drones.
It was the most practical way to scout the uncharted territories before time slipped away.
Yet, his mind wandered beyond the immediate task.
"I haven’t personally explored past this point.I haven’t even laid eyes on the formation said to encase these lands."
He was already aware of the rumors about the tears in its protective barrier. It was the reason that allowed magical beasts to spill into the world at unpredictable intervals.
"That’s a problem I can’t ignore," he resolve. "I’ll need to see it for myself."
With a mental command, Adrian left the Factory and returned back to reality.
He didn’t waste time to summon the Rover, sliding into the cockpit, and drawing the runes to activate it.
The moment the engine roared to life, Adrian pushed the yoke forward and He the Rover surged forward, tearing across the desolate landscape at a speed that blurred the world outside.
The journey stretched on, the monotony of the barren expanse broken only by the occasional tumble of loose stones.
There were no unexpected terrains to navigate. Just an endless, empty plain that made Adrian glad. The last thing he needed was another complication.
After several minutes of driving, the Rover lurched to a sudden stop, as if it had collided with an invisible wall.
"This is it," Adrian said aloud, his voice cutting through the silence.
He stepped out to survey his surroundings. The grounds didn’t look any different from what it had been, just the usual cracked bare earth.
But he was still sure he had met the barrier. His memory of the barriers at the edge of the Kingdom was still fresh in his mind.
They were controlled by the Association and they used a formation to regulate it.
The formation transported adventurers into the Magical Forest, and was held open for their return.
Yet their entry points were random. Sometimes groups appeared together by chance; more often, they were scattered along the forest’s edge.
Now, standing before this one, Adrian felt the weight of its presence pressing against him.
"It’s supposed to be damaged," he murmured. "Finding the crack shouldn’t be hard."
As the words left his lips, his eyes blazed a brilliant blue, [Omnisense] surging to life within him.
The world transformed in an instant. Colors deepened into vivid hues and shadows stretched and twisted, revealing hidden contours in the landscape.
Every detail snapped into crystalline focus, as if he had peeled back a layer of reality itself.
There it was: the barrier, invisible to ordinary sight, shimmering faintly like a mirage caught in the sun’s glare.
It stretched endlessly left and right, a translucent wall of energy that pulsed constantly.
Adrian approached with measured steps.
Then he saw them... cracks, sprawling across the barrier like fractures in glass, stretching for meters in every direction.
They glowed with a faint, erratic light, pulsing irregularly as if the formation were alive, breathing.
Some fissures were narrow, while others were wide enough for him and several others to pass through side by side. But something caught his attention.
"They’re healing," he said, a note of astonishment creeping into his voice.
Before his eyes, the edges of the cracks twitched and shifted, drawing together like threads in a seamstress’s hands.
The process was slow, deliberate, but undeniable... the barrier was repairing itself!
Curiosity pulled him closer and he pressed a hand against the formation.
It was solid, unyielding, yet warm to the touch. A powerful force thrummed beneath his palm, an insatiable hunger that tugged at the air around him.
The barrier was drawing in mana, drinking it in at a voracious rate. Adrian’s mind raced as the pieces fell into place.
"That’s it," he realized. "Formations need mana to hold together."
The former lost soul that had ravaged the entire Corrupted Lands, consuming every scrap of mana within it, had left the barrier weakened.
And without its lifeblood, it had begun to crumble. But now, with the soul gone, mana was seeping back into the world, and the formation was stitching itself whole again.
Adrian stepped back, exhaling sharply.
"The mana density’s still too thin," he observed.
"It will take weeks, maybe months, for things to stabilize."
Adrian expected enough time to go by before the lands became filled with mana, but he was optimistic about the cracks.
Watching them mend, Adrian estimated it would be fully restored in about two weeks.
He could accelerate the process with loads of magic crystals, but why bother? Two weeks was manageable, and his resources were better saved for bigger plans.
The thought of magical beasts flickered through his mind.
Their incursions were unpredictable, tied to the barrier’s breaches, but Adrian wasn’t concerned.
"If anything, I’d welcome them," he admitted with a faint, wry smile.
He planned on pushing his cultivation in the coming days, pushing his now strengthened dantian to its limits, to see how much progress he would make.
And of course, Adrian would love to test his progress.
A wave of beasts would be the perfect challenge, both a measure of his strength and a chance to harvest their remains.
But his ambitions stretched far beyond a few skirmishes.
"I need a way into that forest, even after the cracks seal," he mused, his eyes tracing the shrinking fissures.
The magic forest beyond the barrier wasn’t just a boundary... it was a goldmine.
Teeming with magical beasts, it held resources that could fuel his dream of building a nation.
To secure it, he’d need to craft his own formation around the boundary, a gateway under his control.
The idea excited him, but a pang of frustration followed. He didn’t yet know how to create such a thing.
Adrian’s understanding of formations while advanced, had not reached such levels yet.
He had to devise a plan to master them, or perhaps learn them, and Adrian knew what would facilitate that.
He was confident in being able to make up something if he had a chance to observe one in person, and that was what he was going to do.
He would examine the existing formations himself.