A Reliable Plan

Since they had decided to leave, they had to figure out how. Emma did not want to think about it. Looking at Alex, who seemed so confident, she asked doubtfully, "You have a plan?"

Alex nodded, his face brimming with confidence. "I do. This one’s definitely reliable."

"Let’s hear it?" Emma looked at him curiously.

Alex merely smiled mysteriously and shook his head. "You’ll find out when the time comes."

"Is there something you can’t tell me?" The less Alex said, the more curious Emma became. Twisting her slim waist, she leaned against him and actually started acting coquettish, her voice so syrupy it could make anyone go weak all over.

Fortunately, Alex had enough self-control and maintained his air of inscrutable wisdom. "Cannot be said, cannot be said!"

"You don’t actually have any plan at all, do you?" After spending so much time together, Emma had come to understand Alex’s nature better and better. She looked at him with open suspicion.

Alex’s heart skipped a beat, but his face remained full of confidence. "How could that be? Once I’ve prepared everything, I’ll tell you right away. How about it?"

After finally fending Emma off, Alex squatted on the ground in frustration, his face twisted with conflict. In truth, he had no reliable plan at all. He had been completely bluffing Emma. Emma was willing to give up everything and leave with him, so Alex could hardly tell her to "take it one step at a time." Wouldn’t that be leading her on?

"Now I’ve really made things worse!" Alex pounded his head hard, filled with regret. But the words had already left his mouth, and he had to come up with a reliable plan as quickly as possible.

"We still can’t go through the forest or the swamp. The Bat People may treat me like a god, but the other beastmen and the Swamp People won’t. They’ll probably still cause me trouble. So we can only leave by sea." After thinking it over and over, Alex returned to his original path.

But as Emma had said before, a ship capable of crossing the sea was not something two people could build. Besides, neither of them had any talent for that sort of thing. Even building a raft might be a problem. They could originally have borrowed the warship on the small island, but it had now been reduced to chunks of thick iron and was no longer usable.

"A ship… a ship…" Alex paced back and forth, muttering nonstop, as though repeating it a few more times would conjure a large ship out of thin air.

He had no idea how long he had been muttering when inspiration suddenly struck him. He thought of an idea—one that sounded rather fanciful, but one Alex considered extremely reliable.

"What did you say?" Emma stared at Alex in astonishment and disbelief. "This is the extremely reliable plan you were talking about?"

"What ship is sturdier than that small island?" Alex argued indignantly. "As long as we solve the gravity problem on the seabed, it can drift freely across the sea. Then the Bat People can pull it. It has power and it’s sturdy enough. We can safely cross the ocean and land on the plains on the other side of the continent."

"We only just escaped from down there. You know exactly what the gravity there is like. If we go back down, it’s hard to say whether we can even come back up." Emma was tempted, but she was still worried.

Alex shrugged and said casually, "Anyway, we have the abilities granted by Blue Diamond. We don’t need to worry about breathing underwater."

Blue Diamond had shattered during the collision beneath the sea. The fragments had been absorbed into the bodies of the two of them and the dragon, turning them into blue sprites while also granting them certain abilities. Their bodies possessed the density and toughness of diamonds, which meant they were nearly indestructible. That was how they had survived such a violent collision.

At the same time, their diamond-like bodies—note that this was not the White Queen’s future Diamond Form—meant they did not need to breathe. That was also why they had been able to survive underwater for three whole days.

"Why not say we should just walk across the seabed to the other side? Wouldn’t that be even more convenient?" Hearing Alex’s reasoning, Emma could not help rolling her eyes and speaking irritably.

Alex’s eyes lit up at once, and he said with immense delight, "That’s a good idea…" Noticing Emma’s look, he hurriedly changed his words. "It is a good idea, but it would take too much time, and it would be dangerous. Who knows what creatures we might encounter in the sea? Taking a ship is safer." All kinds of beastmen and savages lived on the continent, and humanoid creatures existed in the ocean as well.

Emma had finally seen the truth: Alex was completely unreliable! But she liked him, so what could she do? She could only follow him back into the sea.

Returning to the ocean, both Alex and Emma felt afraid. Even now, the events of that day remained vivid in their memories, and that bone-deep terror still echoed through their minds from time to time.

After taking a long while to adjust, they swam toward the seabed where the small island lay. The moment they approached, that incomparably familiar immense gravitational pull dragged them rapidly toward the bottom of the sea.

In an instant, after a thunderous collision, Alex and Emma had arrived atop the small island on the seabed.

Overcoming the powerful gravity, Alex and Emma helped each other to their feet. Like snails, they slowly inched toward the center of the island. The gravity was strongest there, and it was also the place most likely to hold the solution to the gravity problem.

They truly had to inch along. Under the enormous gravity, Alex and Emma could not even lift their feet and could only move little by little. Previously, the two of them and the dragon had inched their way out of the island’s gravitational range like this before they managed to escape.

After nearly three hours, Alex and Emma finally reached the center of the island. It was a slightly sunken basin, and as time passed, the depression grew deeper and deeper. This was all the effect of the immense gravity.

Finding the point with the strongest gravity was the first step of the plan. The second step was to bore through the island and find the object on the seabed shelf that was inducing the gravity.

The soil on the island had originally been very loose, but under the compression of gravity, it had become extremely solid. However, Alex and Emma now possessed diamond-like bodies and could cut a huge chunk of earth out of the ground with their bare hands.

After several more hours of work, the two of them finally chiseled through the island, revealing the hard black seabed beneath. A palm-sized Silver Disc appeared before them.

Alex stared at the Silver Disc in astonishment. It was hard to imagine that such a tiny thing could create such enormous gravity. It truly was remarkable.

After marveling over it for a moment, Alex quickly reached toward the Silver Disc.

He pressed it, but there was no reaction. He turned it, and it seemed to move.

As he kept turning it, Alex noticed that the pressure on his body suddenly became much lighter. The gravity had weakened!

"Emma, do you think we can install this disc upside down on the island? Wouldn’t that turn this island into a Floating Island?" Alex suddenly had a wild idea. The disc could alter gravity. If it were installed on the island and offset its weight, the small island could become a Floating Island.

Emma had truly witnessed Alex’s ability to come up with one idea after another. She rolled her eyes and said mockingly, "That idea is actually pretty reliable. More reliable than every idea you’ve had before."