Chapter 279 – Tutorial 60th Floor (0-5)
“I’ll make sure to find out and kill whoever’s behind this multiple times.” I gritted my teeth.
As the number of mirages increased, the anger steadily increased. I had already encountered more than 20 illusions. At this point, I wanted to meet the person behind this more than the city.
No enemy popped out after hearing my murmuring.
Instead, Ahb.o.o.boo talked to me. [Warrior, is it because of the wings?]
Because of the wings.
[Isn’t it supposed to be a walking place?]
Was it considered too easy to fly to the city? Well, I didn’t think so. The Tutorial was not constrained in that way. Even if that were the case, Kirikiri would have given me such information before entering the stage.
No, maybe she couldn’t have told me this time. I had spent all I had left on privacy settings.
I stopped flying and descended to the ground. When I closed Talaria’s wings, it was already early evening. It had been quite a while since I’d flown for this long.
I shook off the sand that stuck to my body. I had tried to stop by using mana, but I couldn’t completely block the sand throughout the flight. Sand fell from my clothes like rainwater from an umbrella.
“So, you mean we should walk instead of flying?”
That’s a possibility.
There was no other way, so I decided to try what Ahb.o.o.boo said. Slowly, I walked on the sand again. I could have run, but I didn’t want to.
There was no particular reason I didn’t want to, but I figured we’d have plenty of time ahead. I didn’t want to rush through. I didn’t have to be impatient or judge the time efficiency.
“No, it’s not even that.”
[Huh?]
When I muttered to myself, Ahb.o.o.boo questioned me. I wanted to go slowly. There was only a limited amount of work, but there was too much time left. If I didn’t slack off, soon everything would be cleared, and time would be left. I hated that.
I hated that a lot, and I was scared. Honestly, it would be sweeter to throw me into a h.e.l.l-like situation and ask me to get out of it. Or I’d rather, you ask me to beat an enemy when I couldn’t stand up. I would do my best to find a way to attack the enemy with a trick. I’d act dangerously. I was better off on that side.
When I finished all my work, training was all I could think of. If I had more time left than the pre-decided time, I couldn’t bear to do something monotonous for long. I won’t be able to stand it.
It was scary. That was why I was taking a walk rather than running in a desert.
I wasn’t an average human, wielding the power of G.o.ds. It was natural that my cla.s.s was elevated, and now, it was hard to think of myself as an ordinary human being. Nevertheless, my fears were too childish and straightforward. I was afraid of being bored and lonely.
There was nothing different from when back then. I thought of myself as an independent person. I preferred to play a game where I won alone rather than playing a game where I had to collaborate with others. It was comfortable and efficient to stand alone.
But to do so, I always needed someone to play against. I needed someone to play games with me, and then, the other person will lose to me again. I couldn’t bear complete independence, contrary to what I had thought.
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[The G.o.d of the Sky watches over you.]
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What about the G.o.d of the Sky who looked at everything from above? There should be no one around or above him. No friends, colleagues, teachers, advisors, brothers, or parents.
Oh, is this rude? I’m sorry.
But some people looked down on the G.o.d of the Sky. Some people considered themselves to be superior. It could be regarded as a terrible self-righteousness to have no one around you and no one above you. On the contrary, it also indicated dependence on people under the G.o.d of the Sky.
That may be why, as Ahb.o.o.boo once said, the Church of the Sky was more secular than other churches, and the welfare and benefits of believers were well established.
I needed someone too. To win, I needed someone beside me. I desperately needed that. On the Tutorial stage, I remembered the faces of countless enemies I had killed. There were many times when I killed without much emotion, but there were times that p.i.s.sed me off. There were a lot of enemies and dead-ends that drove me into crisis. All those enemies were precious to me.
As I walked, the burning sun had set before me. The air was beginning to cool down. I was going to make a fireball for a light source, but that idea came to a halt. It was an amazing starry night.
I thought this was a luxury. The night sky that I looked up at, from the middle of the endless waves of sand over the horizon, was stunning. The twinkling stars were extremely visible and felt very close. I thought they would fall right away. When you get overwhelmed by the natural scenery, you lose a little bit of your self-esteem that was covering you up tightly.
I tried to sweep back the hair strands fluttering before me with my left hand, but I halted my actions. There was no left hand. With a sigh, I arranged my hair with my right hand.
The disappearance of my left arm itself was not that uncomfortable. Not that my left arm was useless. Usually, I wouldn’t care about the loss at all, but when I needed my left hand, the sense of melancholic loss came.
“I don’t even know if I can reach my goal.”
[Huh?]
If the goal was too easy, I was afraid that there would be a lot of time left. So I set a goal that was farthest away, and I liked it. The problem is, it was a bit too far away. I didn’t worry about achieving my goal too quickly and disappearing, but it seemed vague because I wasn’t near it.
“Can’t we wait? Until Hyung-jin comes up to the 60th floor.”
[Of course. You talked to him already. He can come up. It’s just that it would take some time.]
It’d been like this since the first day. As if the things I’d been working on had been ruined. It was no different from paG.o.das built with sand. No matter how high the paG.o.da was, everything collapsed when the ground shook.
Can I wait for Hyung-jin to come without losing sight of my goal? I was anxious.
[There’s no way you’d get bored in two days. You can take a good rest for a few days. It’s not that you can’t stand a short time, but that you’re worried and anxious about the time ahead.]
Ahb.o.o.boo was right. I was worried and anxious in advance. Would I be able to endure those long hours?
[It’s okay. I, Lady Seregia, and the frog are here. When the four of us hang out, it’s easy to spend two years together.]
Ahb.o.o.boo kept comforting me. I thanked him frankly.
“Yes, thank you.”
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[G.o.d of Adventure smiles at you]
[G.o.d of Slowness smiles at you]
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Yeah, I’ll try to hold on like Ahb.o.o.boo said. If I hold out, even if it were a pain, this wait would be over.
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[G.o.d of Adventure smiles more at you]
[G.o.d of Slowness looks at someone pitifully.]
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* * * * * *
As Ahb.o.o.boo said, adding a day or two wouldn’t bring me down. It has already been five days since I entered the 61st floor. For five days, I found a panoramic view of over forty cities and confirmed that it was all a mirage.
“It’ll be real this time.”
[Yes… it could be.]
“If it’s not real, I’ll kill it.”
[What? The mirage?]
Whatever. I’ll blow this whole desert away and find the city.
It’d already been five days. I was flying, walking, and kept repeating both of these. I checked through Ahb.o.o.boo several times because I thought I was trapped in some kind of magic spell. Yet, we found no sign of magic.
“But I think it’s real this time.”
Really. Even though we were close to the city, it had not disappeared. It would not disappear when we’re just around the entrance of the city. It shouldn’t. If it does, then I’ll blow it all up.
“Hi!” A little boy’s face popped out of the city walls. With a smile on his face, the child greeted us.
“Hi!”
“This is not a mirage.”
[I don’t think so either.]
“Hi!”
I answered the little kid who had been saying h.e.l.lo for a while. “Yes, h.e.l.lo.”
The child who had greeted me came down from the wall and opened the city’s gates, leading us to a village inside. No security guard was doing any background checks or asking about the purpose of the visit. There was just a little kid opening the door at random.
The little boy led me to his own house soon. I was wondering if it was okay, but for now, I just followed. At the child’s house, there was an old man who looked surprised to see us visiting suddenly, but he soon prepared water and food.
“Did you really cross the desert?” asked the old man, who appeared to be the child’s grandfather.
I said, “Yes.”
The old man explained the desert with a puzzled look on his face and talked about common sense, which was slightly different from what I expected.
“This is not a mirage, but a milestone?”
The old man nodded in agreement. The village was actually a milestone to tell us that we were on the right path. As a result, we did not get lost walking in the desert.
“You didn’t know about that, and yet, you managed to find it,” the old man remarked and told me to wash up and rest. Of course, it wasn’t for free. I pulled some valuable items out of the inventory.
The old man’s room was small, with only one small bed. As I laid on the bed, it creaked loudly, but I could still lie down.
[It’s a city, thank G.o.d.]
Yeah, having a city on the stage was a significant advantage. In the meantime, we could build a religious sect to collect faith, like on the 56th floor.
With challenging the 61st-floor stage, the city’s existence had allowed us to experiment with many things. It would make it easier to attack the 61st floor with faith, but we would also be able to study and train more. I could say it was a blessing disguised in misfortune.
It was like divine power. Come to think of it, I believe Kirikiri said that above a certain level, there was no difference between Faith and Source.
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[G.o.d of the Sky is baffled.]
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Oh, the G.o.d of the Sky agreed, it seems.
If the divine power violated others’ dominance, the source was the power to break one’s own frame forcefully. When the frame broke, and the boundaries disappeared, if you don’t get yourself together, you’d get eaten by the source. If you held onto your mind and overcame it, you’d be able to break the source’s frame. The G.o.d of the Sky had said that there would be no difference between the divine power and the source, and as it dealt with the source, it could interfere with the control of others. On the contrary, you could apply divine power to yourself. In a way, it was natural.
But it was hard to use a power that was perceived as one’s own to break their own frames. The source was needed to break the frame. That was why stagnant apostles needed a source to get closer to the G.o.ds.
[What do you think?]
“If I succeed in gathering my power and treating it like a source, I think I could recover my severed arm.”
If successful, not only will I be able to regain my missing left arm, but I also will learn a lot about my power.
I’d have a lot of time to wait and a lot of work to do. The first thing I decided to do was to restore my arm through divine power.
“Then shall we start with the sect?”
Ahb.o.o.boo was actively in favor of my plan, while Seregia was silent. When creating and operating a sect, Seregia seemed bored because she had little to do.
“Keeaaeeek!” The summoned frog croaked loudly. He seemed to like the role of mascot for the sect he had played before.
“Then let’s make a plan first.”
The four of us, except for the quiet Seregia, put our heads together to discuss the establishment of the sect.
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