After flipping through the last page of the diary, Max slowly closed it, letting out a quiet breath as the weight of everything he'd just read settled in his mind.
He stared out over the horizon, where distant clouds rolled like waves, the sun casting golden streaks across the sky. The Middle Domain—so vast, so ancient, and so complicated—no longer felt like a formless mystery.
No, he wouldn't call himself an expert. That would be foolish. There were still countless things he didn't know—hidden dangers, secret inheritances, unspoken rivalries, forbidden zones that didn't even make it into the pages of this diary.
But he was no longer ignorant either. He had structure now. A framework to understand this overwhelming world. He knew the names of the major regions. He understood which regions were ruled by first-class forces, which were controlled by second or third-class powers, and how these forces balanced and clashed for dominance.
