Chapter 79: Arrival in the Fragmentation Zone

The Fragment Belt

If the front lines represented the witches’ bloodthirsty, war-loving side as a battle-born race,
then the Fragment Belt embodied their passion for freedom and adventure.

Hundreds of thousands of witches came and went through this region —
some returning triumphant with bright smiles,
others empty-handed and frowning in frustration.

But the thrill of exploration was an addiction none could give up.

The environment here was… strange.

From afar, the Fragment Belt looked like a vast asteroid field —
no planets, no worlds, nothing but drifting rock and dust.
Most footholds were either oversized asteroids or artificial floating witch-islands.

Yet the moment Jiang Cha entered the region,
she felt it — that faint, unexplainable difference.

“Weird, isn’t it?”
Misa leaned close and whispered in her ear.
“This is a special zone — formed where multiple worlds press against each other.”

For witches, world travel and space travel were two entirely different things.

A world meant an otherworld — a separate realm of existence.
To reach one, you either needed precise world coordinates and a stable portal,
or, if you were reckless or lucky,
you could try your fortune in the Fragment Belt,
searching for traces that might lead you to another world.

Space travel, on the other hand, took place within their own universe —
a boundless ocean of stars and civilizations.
Vast, yes, but compared to the endless variety of the otherworlds,
the cosmos still felt cold, still, and a little lifeless.

Less romantic.

The Fragment Belt, then, was something between the two —
a special zone formed where countless worlds collided and compressed across higher dimensions.

It was similar to the interstitial realm where Jiang Cha had once been found —
but smaller, safer,
anchored at least partly in physical reality.

Witches had been exploring this place for nearly a century.
Even before them, other advanced civilizations — dragons, angels, and more —
had tried their hand at its mysteries.

And yet, the Belt remained inexhaustible.

World fragments,
civilization relics,
anomalous regions —
these were constantly being shed from the collisions of worlds,
drifting through dimensions in ways no one yet understood.

World-to-world collisions were supposed to be nearly impossible.
The survival of intact fragments even rarer.
But with infinite worlds colliding over infinite time,
even the smallest probabilities became inevitabilities.

That was why the witches’ expeditions never stopped.

“So where’s our target?” Jiang Cha asked.
“Pretty deep,” Misa replied. “Edge of the explored zone. We’ll need about half a day by shuttle.”
“Eh—? That’s far.”

In the decades of exploration since the witches first arrived,
large portions of the Belt had already been charted.

Newcomers now faced two choices:

Stay in the safe zones, combing through the leftovers —
hoping to find fragments or relics drifting in from elsewhere.

Or plunge into the unknown regions,
mapping new space inch by inch,
hunting treasures buried for eons.

The first was safe but low-yield.
The second was lucrative — and dangerous.

Each team chose their poison.

Daisy’s squad, still fairly new to expedition work,
hadn’t ventured too deep yet.

“We’ve just been hanging around the safer areas,” Daisy sighed.
“Getting used to the rules of the game.”

She tried to sound upbeat, but the frustration in her tone was obvious.

Their last haul had been a Level-2 relic —
roughly the equivalent of a “third-year” difficulty level for battle witches.
For a team of full-fledged great witches like them,
it was barely worth the trouble.

And now they had to split profits again —
two shares going to Jiang Cha, the hired specialist.

No wonder Daisy thought this site was a bit of a dud.

Still, there was no avoiding the cost of outside help.

Hiring Jiang Cha — young and newly licensed — was actually the cheap option.
If they’d brought in a master-class professional from one of the academies,
half the profits would have been gone before they even started.

Even a mid-tier alchemist who understood potioncraft and magi-doll systems
would have taken thirty percent easily.

So, all things considered,
Jiang Cha was a bargain.
And at least with their combined firepower,
they wouldn’t be in any real danger.

If three great witches couldn’t handle a Level-3 ruin,
they might as well disband their team and go home.

“Still, I’d say that’s not too bad,” Jiang Cha offered with a smile.
“I heard some teams can go a whole month without finding anything.”

“Exploration’s a game of luck,” she added. “Some are blessed by fortune, others… not so much.”

Even with skill and planning, randomness ruled.
Now and then, a rookie team would stumble on a new world coordinate and become rich overnight.
It was that unpredictability —
that intoxicating mix of danger and discovery —
that made the witches love the Fragment Belt so much.

Those who wanted stability had long since gone to the front lines —
where battle witches earned steady pay and predictable glory.
Explorers came here for something else entirely.

“Guess we didn’t do that badly, then.”
Daisy exhaled, rolled her shoulders, and grinned again.

In this region, even regular starships were useless.

The density of fractured asteroids,
and the warped, shifting laws of space and magic,
made the Belt a starship-restricted zone.

Some sectors even contained null-magic fields where spells simply fizzled.

The only reliable transport was a micro spatial flyer —
a small, high-speed craft that existed in two dimensions at once.
It could travel through subspace tunnels while still maintaining real-space visibility —
a miracle of witchcraft engineering.

Naturally, it was expensive.
Each one cost several million credits.
But when you split it among three or four witches?
Affordable enough.

“The scenery here really is beautiful,” Jiang Cha murmured,
watching the view unfold on the screen.

What was its beauty, exactly?

Perhaps it was in the endless unknown.

One moment, they passed a fragment of a lush, green forest world.
The next, a drifting shard of a necropolis — an entire dead realm frozen in silence.

Between them stretched only a few light-years of shattered rock,
yet at the speed of their subspace flyer,
the two scenes blended almost seamlessly before her eyes.

Chaotic. Otherworldly. Enchanting.

“We’ve arrived,” Daisy’s voice called out suddenly. “Disembark.”

Jiang Cha blinked, gathering her thoughts as she looked out the viewport.

There, standing tall amid the broken asteroids,
was a tower of silver —
a mage’s spire that pierced the void like a blade of light.

Silent. Majestic.
Waiting for them to begin their exploration.