Chapter 164
Do-Jin fell asleep around sunrise and woke again once night came. Since Karin was with him, he naturally had to be active at night.
After returning to the surface of the Floating Continent, he asked her, “Where’s the highest place here?”
The hidden quest he received from the Forge of the God kept circling in his head. It talked about a place that lay closest to the Star of Creation, and he still couldn’t tell whether that line was meant to be symbolic or literal. If he treated it like some poetic hint, then half the world could suddenly count as a sacred spot, which would turn the entire quest into a pointless riddle.
Do-Jin decided to take it at face value. He would look for the place that physically stood the highest. If any location in this world could be considered closest to the stars, it would be the one sitting at the very top.
Even if I have no clue where the highest point in Lostania is supposed to be, the place itself has to be on the Floating Continent.
This entire landmass floated in the sky only because of some unfathomable magic. Without it, there would not even be enough air to breathe here. No matter how tall the mountains on the other continents were, the backyard hills of the Floating Continent still sat higher. If the highest point in this world existed, it had to be somewhere on this land.
“What are you going to the highest place for?” Karin tilted her head.
“I’m not sure myself...” Do-Jin responded. “Hmm... there are too many tall places. That side is full of mountain ranges, and the other side has hundreds of tall peaks clustered together.”
He would have preferred one overwhelmingly tall peak. That would have made things easier.
“Then... we’ll just check the places that look tallest to you,” Anemone said, a bit confused.
“Leave it to me!” Karin lifted her chin toward the north.
The Floating Continent was unbelievably dangerous, but it did not matter how many Level 200, Level 300, or even Level 400 monsters prowled below. They were flying above all of that anyway. The sky was not completely safe either, but with a Vampire Elder carrying him, almost nothing up here could threaten them.
“It’s right over there!” Karin flapped her wings and pointed straight ahead, clearly fired up about taking the lead.
The mountains seemed to stretch on forever. The range was so massive that even wild exaggeration couldn’t quite match how absurd it was, and nothing like it existed on Earth. It had the kind of otherworldly presence one might expect to see on Mars.
This quest’s difficulty feels completely fucked, Do-Jin thought bitterly.
He could manage because he had Grand Duke in his corner and Karin guiding him. Anyone else would struggle the moment they tried to set foot on the Floating Continent, and even if they somehow managed to get here, they would have to run around on foot and figure out which spot counted as the highest point.
He assumed the quest had been designed so no one could do anything right after picking it up. It must’ve been intended for players to wander off, collect clues somewhere else, and slowly piece the whole thing together.
Whatever. As long as I clear it in the end, it counts. If it gets too ridiculous, I still have my cheat key anyway.
If he brought out the Elder Vampire, whose level was who-knew-how-high, he would probably get hit with penalties across the reward screen, no matter how big his hidden-quest bonus was.
Life really is all about connections.
Whenever the world felt confusing, one truth still held. Life was built on connections, and earning someone’s goodwill was simply unbeatable.
“From a quick look, that one and that one... and maybe those three over there seem the tallest to me,” Karin said.
“Then we should start with the closest one.”
Do-Jin picked out the mountains that seemed a little taller than the rest, and Karin headed straight for the nearest among them. She shot upward with a sharp whistle, gaining altitude so fast the Floating Continent’s surface dropped far below them. Breathing was already getting harder here.
“It feels like the perfect weather to freeze to death.”
That was his honest impression the moment they landed on the peak. His body in this world was practically superhuman, which was the only reason he wasn’t instantly turned into a frozen tuna steak. If he had been using his real-world body, he would have died the moment he set foot here.
“Is it too cold for you?” Karin asked with genuine worry, unable to tell at all.
Do-Jin shook his head to reassure her. “I am fine. I prepared for the cold pretty thoroughly.”
The chill managed to bite through every resistance he had, but he could handle it. If it got too bad, he could always burn some mana to circulate heat through his body. However, he wasn’t focused on that right now.
There’s no trigger of any sort, Do-Jin thought.
Neither the hidden quest nor the quest item, the Starlight Soul Ingot, showed any sign of responding. If something related to the quest existed somewhere in this mountain buried under eternal snow, then something should have reacted. That meant the chance of this spot having absolutely nothing to do with the quest was extremely high.
“Looks like this isn’t—”
He turned toward Karin to say they should leave, but she suddenly punched the air. A deafening boom ripped open the ground right beside him. A fan-shaped blast of snow tore forward and bright red splattered across the white spray like someone had mixed paint into it.
When he checked, he saw scraps of torn hide that used to belong to a snow leopard. It had been hiding, waiting to pounce on him, but it had the misfortune of crossing paths with Karin and got obliterated before it could even scream.
“I am sorry. The other ones ran off the moment I glared at them, but that one kept pushing its luck,” she said.
The thing must have been starving. It tried to sneak in anyway, even though she was glaring holes into it, and ended up like that.
Noticing how worried Karin seemed about interrupting his thoughts, Do-Jin thanked her before heading off for another mountain.
“This one’s not it. This one... isn’t it either.”
He searched every place that looked remotely high, but the hidden quest refused to budge. He found nothing but snow leopards, bears, white trolls, ogres, snow golems, and every other local monster there was to find. By the end of a full day of mountain-hopping, he had checked every solid candidate and every could-be-here location. Yet there was nothing, absolutely nothing.
Hmm... maybe the quest didn’t mean height in the literal sense. Do-Jin stared at the mountain ridges around him with the kind of expression one made when the universe clearly decided to be an asshole.
“There are plenty of tall mountains in other places too...” Karin said softly, trying to cushion the blow.
However, Do-Jin was still tired after this silly goose chase. He’d chosen this place because it looked like the highest point on the entire Floating Continent, and if this peak had nothing, the rest of the candidates were probably not it.
Hah... I should at least check the others.
If those also fell flat, then he would need to chase clues from a completely different angle, which meant he wouldn’t be clearing the quest any time soon. He’d have to keep playing, pray the game threw him a clue someday, and hope the quest unraveled itself out of pity.
It was probably smarter to shelve this pain-in-the-ass quest and come back to it if something ever falls into my lap.
He forced himself to think that through while scanning the scenery. Then, his eyes fixed on something he’d been looking past all this time: a wide snowfield stretched across the distance. He hadn’t bothered to check that out because it sat lower than his current position, but it was still part of the mountain top. He only thought it was low because he was standing on a peak high enough to piss even birds off.
What the hell is that shape...?
He missed it earlier because he had been standing too close for the outline to pop. Once he stepped back far enough, the whole formation finally showed itself, almost like the mountain had been hiding it just to screw with him for hours.
“Karin, doesn’t that look weird to you?”
“What does?”
“That mountain shape... It looks crushed, like something smashed the top clean off.”
Karin narrowed her eyes at his words. Now that she focused, it really did look like that. The mountain looked like it used to shoot way higher, but a chunk of it was missing.
“Oh, now that I see it...” Karin mumbled, grabbing Do-Jin immediately and shooting into the air to show him her angle.
She climbed until their height matched the distant horizon. The snow pattern finally came into view, and the whole surface looked torn up. It looked like somebody punched crater after crater into the mountain until it barely held its shape. It must have been a disaster that occurred long before any record existed, giving rise to this hidden quest.
If that was the case, then this must’ve been the tallest mountain back then.
[Sanctuary of the Blue Star rejects the approach of this unclean presence.]
A message appeared before they even got close. He had been right about chasing the highest point. The quest just wanted the place that had been the highest in the past instead of the one towering over everything now.
What the hell is this notification?
As soon as Do-Jin thought that, Karin suddenly jerked in midair like something yanked her wings. “Ah!”
Her wings blinked out of existence. She tried to force new ones out on instinct, but the gathered mana collapsed before it even held a shape.
“Karin!” Do-Jin shouted, a bit panicked.
“I am sorry! Something is restricting my power!” she yelled back as they both began to fall.
You’re kidding me... We are falling from this height?
The ground didn’t come any closer. The world just stretched forever under them. The fall felt exactly like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. The impact waiting at the end would be big enough to turn them into a stain. Even if he blasted Psychokinesis as hard as he could, it wouldn’t be enough to fight gravity at this speed.
If I was high enough level to actually fly, this shit would not be happening... Damn it!
Do-Jin looked at the speed of their fall and reached the one conclusion that made sense. Dodging death would be almost impossible at this height. He grabbed Karin as tightly as he could and forced the words out. “Karin, you need to live even if it is by yourself. I am fucked anyway so—”
Karin crushed him against her chest before he could finish. Her strength cut his breath off so hard he couldn’t squeeze out another sound.
“Do not say such things.” Her voice dropped into a cold, emotionless tone that matched a Vampire Elder perfectly. It sounded nothing like the Karin he heard every day.
Karin focused everything she had left. Since her power hadn’t vanished completely, she had to try something and drag them out of this deadly mess.
She began trying a third time to rematerialize her wings, though they were far from their usual elegant shape. They spread out like a massive sheet of blood, stretched so wide it looked ready to tear. It caught the air like a desperate parachute and smashed their falling speed down hard enough to make Do-Jin’s stomach lurch.
Karin kept creating giant membranes without stopping. When one blinked out, she made another. When one buckled, she forced a new one open. And when one shattered, she clenched her jaw and shaped a fresh layer without hesitation.
She squeezed every drop of strength into slowing their fall. She counted the distance to the ground, the sinking speed, and the pathetic amount of time each membrane could survive before it got ripped apart.
Right now. This has to be it!
The final blood parachute snapped open. The sudden deceleration punched through their bodies so hard Do-Jin felt his guts twist. The Sanctuary’s force rammed into them at the same time and shredded the membrane like wet paper.
Karin flipped her body midair even while that power crushed her. She shoved Do-Jin upward so his back faced the sky, and she lined herself up to take the hit head-on.
A bone-crunching crash roared through the ice and snow. Karin had wrapped both of them in a blood barrier the moment her body slammed into the ground. Unlike the gigantic wing membranes that kept collapsing immediately, the tight barrier around their bodies held on for a little longer.
Ice split and erupted around them. Snow burst upward in a red spray as Karin’s blood splashed everywhere, staining the ground like she was painting it with her life. It was absolutely the worst way to land, but her effort had saved Do-Jin.
“Motherfucker!” Several of his ribs snapped like twigs, and his arm and shoulder broke clean through. Considering the height they had fallen from, the fact that he was still alive felt like a miracle.
“Karin...! Karin, are you okay?!”
Even while coughing through the pain, the first thing he checked was her. He blasted out as much Psychokinesis as he could muster to help cushion both their falls, but Karin had still taken almost the entire impact by herself. The Sanctuary even suppressed her power on top of that.
“I am perfectly fine!”
He expected serious injuries. He expected her to collapse or at least sound hurt. Instead, her voice rang out completely normal, which made Do-Jin’s strength drain out of him in one useless sigh.
“Something was trying to interfere with my power, but not to worry! I am still an Elder.”
Do-Jin gritted his teeth through the pain and forced his body to turn over until she came into view. “How can you tell me you’re fine?”
Her condition looked absolutely abysmal. Blood streamed down her head like someone had dumped a bucket of red paint over her. Even in that state, she smiled at him like she felt nothing but relief that he had survived.
“Please don’t worry. Something like this heals quickly.” Karin furrowed her brows and focused. The blood running down her head actually pulled itself back, and the wound slowly sealed shut. The speed was painfully slow, but it worked.
Seeing that, Do-Jin also began healing himself with a potion.
“It looks like we crashed somewhere around the middle of the mountain.” He glanced around. They seemed to have slammed into the mid-slope area, but he couldn’t tell exactly where.
So that is how it is. The Sanctuary refuses to let me cheese this quest, he thought.
Do-Jin had every intention of abusing Karin’s power if things went sideways. Now he stood halfway up the mountain, feeling hopeless, with a long, painful climb still waiting between him and his destination.