Betty thought Ethan was disheartened, which was why he had been lying there all day.
The truth was, Ethan had already found what he was looking for. The so-called device containing the power of time had been right under his nose all along.
He wasn't spacing out while observing the grass. Ever since he sensed something, he had been systematically breaking the grass in front of his shack, from left to right, pulling up the entire root, then most of it, then half of it, all the way to the rightmost blades where only a small tip was broken off.
During this process, he observed the recovery status of these grasses and found that the situation matched what he had sensed: the grasses grew at an astonishing speed, quickly returning to their original state.
Then... it was as if these grasses stopped growing, remaining consistently in that state.
It wasn't just the grass. Ethan had already discovered that all the plants on the entire island were in this state.
Trees, after being cut down, would regrow very quickly, and after reaching a certain size, they seemed to enter a state of stagnation, as if the time of the entire tree had been frozen.
Ethan stopped lying down and stood up, gently patting the dirt off his clothes.
"I've found the special technology you mentioned earlier that this island uses."
Only then did Betty realize what Ethan was looking for, but she hadn't seen him go out to search. He had been lying there the whole time.
However, she didn't care about that. What she cared about was, since the item had been found, when would they leave?
"Is the scenery here not good?"
Ethan looked at the surrounding environment: beautiful beaches, a clear blue sea, lush green grass, living in natural handmade wooden and stone houses, eating various wild game and seafood. Such a small island was simply a vacation or retirement paradise. If Ethan could have an island of his own, he would want it to be like this.
"It's not a matter of scenery or not."
Betty was very eager to return home. Although many years had passed, considering the long lifespan of the Empire's people, she still hoped to see her relatives.
"No need to rush, even if you didn't urge us, we were planning to leave."
Although Logan and O'Connell were happily busy building houses and farming on the island, they couldn't stay on this island forever. Everyone was aiming for the stars and the sea.
More importantly, after realizing that this world was just a military training ground for a certain country, they felt uncomfortable being within someone else's sphere of influence. Even if they wanted to enjoy life, they needed to find a place that was relatively free or entirely their own.
The reason they hadn't expressed a desire to leave was that everyone had their own things to do. Now that their goals were achieved, and Ethan had also found his target, they were going to leave even without Betty urging them.
Betty didn't know Ethan and the others' thoughts. During this time, she had been wandering around the island, focusing on another matter.
"Speaking of leaving, where exactly is your ship docked?"
This wasn't the first time she had asked this question. At first, Ethan replied that the ship was hidden.
Betty had adventured in this ocean back in the day and knew it was normal to hide a ship.
But during this time, she had circled the entire island, checked all the places where a ship could dock, and there were no hidden caves or similar places on the island. She couldn't figure out where Ethan had hidden the ship.
"At sea, it's docked quite far away, so you can't see it," Ethan explained to Betty. "Why is it docked so far? Because my ship is relatively large and cannot approach this island."
Since they were about to leave, there was no need for Ethan to hide these facts. Anyway, even if he didn't say anything, Betty would see it with her own eyes soon.
Betty didn't take Ethan's claim that his ship was very large seriously at all. As a student from the top military academy, who had grown up in the vast Empire that ruled this universe, she was skeptical of Ethan's definition of very large.
She thought these natives probably had never seen a truly large ship—not to mention the large warships used in space, even modern surface vessels used within a planet would be enough to scare these natives who were still using sailing ships to death.
Even if these natives had developed some technology, Betty still didn't think they could build more advanced ships...
It wasn't until the Quinjet from the Prinz Eugen deactivated its optical camouflage in front of her and slowly landed on the grass that Betty, with her mouth wide open and a look of disbelief, asked Jonathan beside her, "Has the outside world developed to this extent?"
"Our team... is quite special."
Jonathan didn't know how to answer and could only use such words to brush her off.
Of course, Betty wasn't satisfied. She wanted to turn back and ask Ethan if the natives outside had already mastered a higher level of civilization.
But when she turned her head, she saw Ethan standing alone, facing the entire island with his back to everyone.
Just as she was about to go over and ask something, she was pulled back by Selene beside her. "Don't disturb him now."
"What is he doing?"
Betty noticed that everyone else had already boarded the aircraft, and only Ethan remained on the island.
"He is going to retrieve some things."
Compared to Betty, who had no idea what was going on, Ethan had already explained his discovery and what he was about to do in detail to his companions.
The power of time he had been searching for was always right under their feet. The island itself was the device that possessed the ability to manipulate time.
Ethan wasn't sure what technology the Empire used, but they had managed to integrate a portion of time energy into the island, allowing the plants on the island to accelerate their growth when needed, and then stop growing after reaching a certain stage.
The function of this time energy was to maintain the island in a perfect state, making people feel comfortable on the island.
After arriving here, everyone had a feeling of not sensing the passage of time. This was the effect caused by the dissipation of this time energy.
After realizing this, Ethan didn't bother to search further. Instead, he continuously sensed the time energy and established a preliminary connection with it.
After that, he was going to extract all this energy.
Extracting a certain type of energy is not difficult for mages of any system. For most mages, it is as simple as eating and drinking water.
These energies were also unowned dissipated energy, and extracting them had no resistance at all.
The only problem was that no one could be sure what would happen to the island once the time energy was completely extracted.
Even Ethan wasn't sure what changes would occur.
In a good scenario, there would be no change, except that the island would not recover quickly after being cut down as before, but would need to regrow like normal plants or completely die and not recover.
In a bad scenario, perhaps the entire island's energy system would be destroyed by Ethan, and the island would directly collapse and be annihilated. This was highly possible.
So Ethan didn't act immediately but waited until everyone had completed their planned goals: Mordred needed to re-hone her combat skills; Galahad needed to learn basic magical knowledge; Hill was training to improve her Holy Light; even Logan was using farming to refine his Druid spells...
It wasn't until everyone had completed their training plans and were ready to leave that Ethan prepared to extract these energies.
The Quinjet slowly ascended into the air. The rear hatch of the plane was not closed, but left open. Several people stood at the hatch, wanting to see how Ethan planned to extract these time energies.
Betty was among them. She didn't know what Ethan was going to do, but that didn't stop her from grabbing a prime spot to see what exactly Ethan was up to.
Ethan looked back and saw that the Quinjet had slowly flown out of the island's range and stopped about a hundred meters from the coast. Only then did he begin to extract the time energy from the island beneath his feet.
He didn't need any tools. The space-time orb on his left hand was the best tool.
Ever since he established a connection with these energies, the space-time orb on his left hand had been wanting to extract all of them.
Fortunately, Ethan's control over the space-time orb far exceeded what it was back then, allowing him to suppress it well and prevent it from automatically extracting time energy.
Now there was no need to continue suppressing it. As Ethan released the restriction and allowed the space-time orb to extract the energy beneath his feet, the entire island flashed with a faint light. The space-time orb on Ethan's left hand emitted an even more dazzling light, enveloping Ethan himself in the light.
From a distance, Ethan looked like he had turned into a blue orb of light, and at the same time, the light on the island seemed to flow slowly, continuously surging towards that orb of light.
For Logan and the others, what was happening before their eyes was nothing. Ethan had created much grander scenes over the years. Compared to those, this was not much different from using a magic circle for transportation at ordinary times, except that the area covered by the light was a bit larger.
Moreover, the duration of these lights was not long. They quickly dissipated, so there was nothing much to see. Except for Betty, who was still staring in a daze with her mouth wide open, the others found seats and sat down.
After a long while, Betty looked at Ethan standing alone on the island, slightly regaining her senses. As if remembering something, she asked Selene beside her, "Are we going to pick him up?"
"No, he will catch up on his own."
"Catch up?" Betty looked at Ethan, who was dressed casually and didn't seem to have any special equipment on him. "How will he catch up?"
Selene didn't say anything because she didn't need to answer. Betty had already seen the answer—Ethan didn't use any tools, but slowly floated into the air, then turned around and flew straight towards them.
(To be continued.)