Across the vast wasteland, two trails of dust raced side by side at breakneck speed.
One rider was Finn on a mountain bike. The other was Jimmy on an off-road motorcycle.
Jimmy wasn’t even wearing a helmet. He tore across the desert on his flashy red dirt bike, launching into jumps, popping wheelies, catching air, and showing off every flashy trick in the book.
“Bro, check out how sick I am right now?!” Jimmy yelled.
“Cool, super cool, you’re blasting straight into the sky,” Finn answered, riding one-handed while his other hand fiddled with the high-energy scanner mounted on the handlebars. He didn’t even glance at Jimmy’s performance.
Jimmy shouted into the wind, “Back home, when we used to street race, we’d tie a string of five thousand firecrackers to the ass end of the motorcycle! Shit was wild!
Before the words were even out of his mouth, a jagged rock jutted up right in front of the motorcycle.
The bike couldn’t swerve in time. The front wheel slammed into it, launching the whole thing skyward. Jimmy flew off with the momentum, tracing a perfect arc through the air.
“I really am a prophet,” Finn muttered to himself. He gripped the handlebars and looked up at Jimmy, who was still blasting straight into the sky.
Jimmy sailed toward the blue sky, then slammed into the sand with a heavy thud. His head cracked open and started bleeding.
Finn shook his head, turned the bike, and pedaled toward where Jimmy had crashed.
Jimmy lay sprawled on the ground, covered in blood. Sand and gravel stuck to the gash on his forehead, and his right arm was clearly broken. He groaned in pain, all the earlier swagger completely gone.
“Not showing off anymore?” Finn stopped his bike and looked down at the wrecked Jimmy.
“Save me…” Jimmy whined, his face all scrunched up in misery. Every part of his body ached like hell, and it felt like his bones were about to rattle apart.
The flashy red off-road motorcycle lay on its side in the sand, rear wheel still spinning pointlessly in the air.
Finn reached into his storage space, pulled out a bottle of healing potion, and tossed it to Jimmy. “Drink it.”
Jimmy stretched out his unbroken arm and grabbed the pale-red potion bottle with difficulty. He gave Finn a pitiful, pleading look, clearly hoping he’d twist the cap off for him, but Finn didn’t move a muscle.
Right now Finn sat on his bicycle with both feet off the ground. The bike wasn’t moving at all, yet it stayed perfectly balanced on just its two wheels.
If any scientist in the wasteland saw this, they would’ve screamed—this bike was straight-up unscientific! How the hell was it defying gravity?
Jimmy had no choice. He’d brought this on himself, so he had to fix it himself. He groped around until he found a rock, smashed the glass neck of the bottle with it, then carefully tipped the healing potion down his throat, trying his best not to slice his lips on the jagged edges.
In no time, Jimmy’s wounds closed up completely. His broken arm and ankle snapped back into place. Covered head to toe in dust and dirt, he climbed to his feet, hauled his motorcycle upright, and got back on the road. From then on, he drove a whole lot more carefully.
He pulled out a marker like a good boy and started scribbling on a piece of paper, writing down all the distinctive landmarks around them. He sketched out a rough map and marked off the directions they had already explored.
Finn was still riding one-handed, but the axle of his bike had the “Ever-Stable Swiftstride” talisman carved into it, so even on rough, complicated terrain the bike handled perfectly.
The high-energy scanner mounted on the handlebars still showed nothing but chaotic lines on the screen—colored traces crisscrossing and wiggling with no rhyme or reason.
Finn hated staring at that crap. It reminded him of the oscilloscopes he used to mess with when calibrating old electronic gear.
“Should’ve brought a few drones with us,” he sighed.
According to the data on the Myriad Realms Network, a World Nucleus held pure, massive amounts of energy that could twist everything around it. One single World Nucleus packed as much power as thousands of stars combined.
Back in the Delta-FOUR-D-6536 world, the Star Cosmos Empire screwed up the handling of one. It exploded and wiped out an entire solar system in an instant. Countless powerhouses died on the spot.
One thing worth explaining: in the Endless Worlds, there’s a standard naming system for worlds. Take the current Beta-SIX-A-985 world as an example.
Beta-SIX-A-985. The “Beta” part shows how rich the world’s resources are. There are ranks like Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Eta, Theta, Iota, and so on. Alpha is the highest, Beta is right below it, and the rest drop lower from there.
“SIX” marks the danger level. There are nine levels total, from one to nine—the bigger the number, the more dangerous it gets. “SIX” is already pretty high up the scale.
“A” represents how vast the world is. There are grades like S, A, B, C, D, and so on. Some worlds are tiny low-dimensional micro-realms hidden inside atomic nuclei, while others are endless expanses—multiverses, parallel planes, high-dimensional spaces, you name it.
“985” is simply this world’s serial number.
This kind of world-naming system is pretty standard across the Endless Worlds these days.
As for the Star Cosmos Empire, it’s a cross-world super empire that claims its territory covers more than six hundred thousand different worlds.
In the Endless Worlds, the Star Cosmos Empire wasn’t the only cross-world superpower. Far out at the edge of the myriad realms, another empire called the Celestial Profound Dynasty controlled nearly five hundred thousand worlds of its own.
Besides them, there was the United Nations of Intelligent Civilizations that ruled over two hundred and twenty thousand worlds, the Deviant Path Alliance that had banded together across more than eighty thousand worlds, and plenty of others. The list went on and on.
As for those backwater powerhouses who only controlled one or two worlds and immediately started thinking they were hot shit, acting like kings and tyrants, there were way too many to count.
Not every discovered world fell under the control of these cross-world empires. Plenty of them were still unclaimed territory.
Some worlds harbored incomprehensible, unspeakable, indescribable horrors—far more twisted and evil than any evil god. Even the Star Cosmos Empire didn’t dare mess with them.
That was why even the mightiest cross-world empires still felt helpless when faced with the boundless Endless Worlds.
Take the Star Cosmos Empire, for example. Officially, it claimed to rule over more than six hundred thousand worlds. But Finn knew the truth: pretty much every single one of those worlds had resistance forces fighting back.
Of course, aside from the numbered worlds with public data on the Myriad Realms Network, there were countless more worlds out there that no one had discovered yet…
…
Finn pedaled his bicycle for a stretch, circling around Black Mountain in a wide loop. He decided that if there were no more clues, he would leave this place and head to Ironatom.
Ironatom produced Nuka-Cola, and it was also home to a mysterious Cool Prophet. Finn held a faint spark of anticipation for the place.
Across the bleak, windswept wasteland, sand whipped against his face. Suddenly, Finn caught the sound of rushing water coming from the northwest. It seemed like a powerful river was flowing there.
Finn turned his handlebars and rode curiously toward the sound.
Without warning, gunshots cracked from a ruined stone fortress ahead. A hail of bullets slammed straight into Finn.
Several rounds also ripped toward the bicycle tires, sparking and popping with bright flashes. Yet the mountain bike’s speed didn’t falter for a second; it kept rolling smoothly.
Once the shooter realized the bullets had no effect on Finn, a figure stepped out from behind the fortress. He hoisted a rocket launcher onto his shoulder, took quick aim, and fired.
In a flash, a vivid crimson blaze erupted as a blazing iron meteor streaked straight at Finn.
“If I just keep tanking explosions like this, it gets way too boring,” Finn muttered, his expression turning cold. His left hand gripped the bicycle handlebar while his right hand flicked out a long sword.
This was Finn’s personal blade—the Skybearer Sword. Its edge gleamed with chilling sharpness, the spine ran in strong, resolute lines, and the thick, heavy body was built for powerful chops and slashes. Talismans were engraved along the sword, and he poured Profound Energy into it, making the blade sharp enough to slice iron like mud and cleave through metal and stone.
Whenever firearms weren’t the right tool, or when a sudden rush of sword intent hit him, Finn would draw the Skybearer Sword and hack his way through everything in his path.