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Chapter 101

It was difficult to climb a mountain even 1,000 meters tall.

That is... if you tried to climb honestly

Rumble!

Even a mountain that was 10,000 meters tall was only 10,000 meters if one fell straight down.

Right now, it wouldn’t take me even a few minutes to travel those 10 kilometers.

Oddly, the fact that the sides of Spirit Mountain were more sheer than most mountains was a positive here.

Of course, I didn’t know how tall this odd mountain was...

“But you’re saying that I can make it down within the next 10 days, right?”

[Theoretically, it is possible, but...]

For some reason, Fourth Senior Brother seemed to sigh.

[You can’t treat Spirit Mountain like an ordinary mountain.]

“Of course.”

I had never considered it as such.

Senior Brother seemed to want to say something else, but he instead shook his head and mumbled, [...It’ll be better for him to experience it than for me to try and explain it a hundred times.]

“...?”

It was on the second day that I realized what he’d meant.

Beep.

[Current Progress: 50.0%]

When I reached the halfway point...

Fwoosh!

A powerful gust of wind blew in from nowhere, making it difficult to open my eyes.

“Gyak!”

I nearly lost my balance and flew away.

Due to the sudden shift in the situation, I even made a weird sound.

This wind didn’t seem to simply be the air resistance created by my direct fall down.

Spirit Mountain seemed to have suddenly gone mad as the winds continuously blew with great fury.

Even though this was the only change, the difficulty of my descent had increased several times over.

It’s like I just dropped into a storm!

It was a superstorm that would blow away even a sturdy building.

I had no choice but to put more strength into each step to stop myself from flying away.

Naturally, that meant that my speed decreased significantly.

“...!”

Then, suddenly, a wall appeared before my eyes.

Of course, since I was nearly running down at a 70-degree angle, it was less a wall and more a cliff path.

Specifically, it was the path I would have walked down if I had taken the proper route.

But that wasn’t the important part right now...

Damn it.

Because it had appeared so suddenly within the fog, my face planted straight into it.

Thud!

My body bounced from the impact and flew into the empty air.

This is really dangerous.

It might be obvious, but I didn’t have any way to fly.

Even on this dangerous cliff-face run, there was a significant difference between having my feet on solid stone and not.

At my current trajectory, I would have no choice but to plummet powerlessly to the ground.

What can I do?

If I’d had any internal energy remaining, I would’ve had a way out, but all that remained in my inner core was crumbs.

At this moment, I saw FAD in my periphery.

It didn’t even have a face, but it still felt as if I was meeting its eyes.

[...]

“...”

[...Wait—]

“Sorry.”

I immediately turned my body in the air and used FAD as a base to jump up.

Crunch.

With the sound of crushing metal, I was able to just barely return to my original path.

Boom!

I purposely put more strength into my landing.

In that moment, FAD disappeared into the distance.

“...FAD?”

A short moment passed.

From beyond the fog, a flying entity approached me while wobbling in the air.

Bzzt, bzt...

A word appeared on its cracked screen.

[FAD’s one-line comment: bitch.]

“...I’m really sorry,” I apologized again.

* * * * *

* * * * *

I couldn’t rely on being lucky like that.

Ignoring the fact that FAD was now keeping a consistent distance between us...

Since that event, I’d begun to move with much more caution toward my surroundings, even if it meant I had to slow down a little.

It wasn’t easy.

The winds became stronger and the fog began to thicken.

I wondered why the fog wasn’t being blown away by the strong winds, but I knew not to use logic on Spirit Mountain.

Five days passed.

[Current Progress: 78.7%.]

Considering my remaining distance and time, I should be able to reach the bottom. I just need to keep covering about five percent each day.

Of course, that was only true if no further variables appeared.

I hoped that nothing else changed severely...

But, perhaps as expected of Spirit Mountain, it tried its hardest to stop me.

Rumble...!

On the 98th day, with just two days remaining...

Rain started to fall from the sky.

The sudden storm created many problems for me.

It lowered my visibility even further, and the rain that dropped on my skin annoyed me and lowered my body temperature, but those were all minor.

The real problem was that the cliff face became slippery.

I ended up having to put even more strength into my steps to stop from losing my balance.

Rumble...!

I mean, I guess I should be thankful that no lightning bolts are falling from those storm clouds.

Crackle!

...Damn it.

A lightning bolt struck the surface not far from me.

Crumble.

I looked at the stone fragments that fell away and gulped for the first time in a while.

Still, this was fine.

I heard that getting hit by a lightning bolt was very unlikely.

You’d need to be beyond unlucky to be—

Boom!

The bolt slammed down a little closer to me, and I realized something obvious.

These lightning bolts weren’t natural.

I raised my head a little to look up at the sky.

The moment it felt like I met eyes with the thundercloud...

Crackle!

I saw a bolt of lightning falling down toward me like a spear.

Since I can see it with my eyes, isn’t it slower than a regular lightning bolt?

...That was a useless thought to have in the moment.

It was still a lightning bolt falling from the sky.

I noticed that the spear of electricity had already reached in front of my nose, and I felt my hair stand on end.

If it even grazed me, I would be electrocuted and the fog would take my body.

Dash!

I kicked off the cliff and forced my body to change trajectory.

Boom!

I just barely managed to get out of that bolt’s range, but I was still struck by fear.

For some reason... it felt like the bolts were falling faster and faster.

Rumble!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t just a feeling.

I continuously dodged the bolts that fell on me one after another.

Even so, I couldn’t give all my focus to dodging them since I was still running down the mountain.

I was wary of another path appearing in front of my face like last time...

But even while keeping that in mind, I also needed to put a lot of strength into my legs to not slip on the wet cliff face.

Calculating both of these at the same time would’ve required me to have two brains, but my body carried out all the commands given to it.

It felt different from a normal flash of enlightenment.

Instead of my mind going into a trance, it was my body.

Flash...!

The bolts were no longer falling one at a time.

I now knew what it meant to see a thousand lightning bolts at once.

Boom!

I took another step on the relatively quieter cliff path.

For the first time, I stopped my charge despite still having the energy to keep going.

“...”

I had a premonition that the space in front of me was very dangerous.

I felt pressure and danger beyond anything I had felt before.

[It seems your danger sense hasn’t changed.]

I could hear the voice of my fourth senior brother from beyond the rain, but due to the heavy downpour, I wasn’t able to see FAD.

[In front of you is the Field of Ten Thousand Lightning. It’s not something you can tread through lightly.]

“...”

[Let’s stop here, Luan. I’ll repeat what I told you before: returning to the past is very enticing, but its importance shouldn’t outweigh your own life.]

I’d been curious about something for a while.

“So if I die here, I really die?”

[That’s right.]

Thinking about it, it was obvious.

However...

“...”

[Luan?]

I stood there and silently looked at the crackling thunder.

[Are you giving up?]

I could hear Senior Brother’s voice, but I didn’t respond.

I didn’t have time to.

Rather, I looked up at the flashing bolts of lightning that continued to fall.

The lightning that jumped between the gray thunderclouds made me imagine they were the cracks in reality before a world died.

But in reality... wasn’t that true?

Some huge entity from beyond the sky... was using a monstrously large hammer to smash down on the sky again and again.

Thunder was the sound created due to the strikes, and the lightning was the cracks it made.

It might be a stupid delusion, but I needed to personify it here.

Just like how Fourth Senior Brother had compared a tree to a martial artist, I needed to turn the lightning bolts into an enemy I could defeat.

Maybe because of my lack of imagination, I found it difficult to make myself believe that nature was an enemy I had to defeat.

That was the reason I needed to imagine an even bigger enemy who could control the lightning bolts.

And to defeat a strong opponent, I needed to take the time to analyze them.

“—”

At some point, I stopped hearing anything.

Had my ears gone deaf due to the continued thunder?

It wasn’t too bad.

Rather, with the disrupting sounds no longer present, I was able to focus better.

Around when I began to forget the passage of time...

“...”

I suddenly felt that a lightning bolt was going to fall where I was standing, so I moved to the side.

A silent flash of light filled my vision.

Even with my eyes closed, I could see them in the darkness.

How did I dodge that? I asked myself, but it was a question I wasn’t able to answer.

It didn’t feel like luck. For some reason, I’d felt like I could guess where the bolt was going to fall.

I felt like I understood why enlightenment couldn’t be explained with words.

I let out a deep sigh.

At some point, this had become the signal that I was ready.

A weak flow of heat began to move from my inner core all throughout my body.

In this perfect silence where I couldn’t even hear the ringing in my ears, I took a step as if possessed.

I threw my body into the Field of Ten Thousand Lightning.

Flash!

I instinctively understood that the place being struck by lightning was the safest place.

I utilized everything I had analyzed and fused my sixth sense with the other five. That still wasn’t enough, so I also started predicting where the next bolts would fall.

My eyes seemed to have become weird as well. The places I needed to step looked like they were glowing brightly, as if to distinguish them.

I connected the multiple glowing areas and walked through them.

It was an odd feeling.

Even though I had never moved like this before, my legs moved naturally as if I had walked this path many times.

As if I was utilizing a familiar martial art—

“...Ah.”

Goosebumps ran up my arm.

Even though I hadn’t realized it myself, this was a movement technique.

I realized the thoughts and analyzing I’d done before stepping into this area had been to move as effectively as possible through the field.

The process was comparable to when a martial artist created a martial art.

What did all that mean?

It meant that without even realizing it, I had created a martial art.

“Ha, haha...”

In this silent space, only my laughter could be heard clearly.

I couldn’t help but laugh.

This way of walking was my own martial art.

It lacked the influence of House Bednicker, the forgotten god, and even my master.

A martial art created by me alone through the situation and phenomenon I was experiencing.

I always enjoyed giving names to new techniques.

Maybe thanks to that habit of mine, I thought up the perfect name for this accidentally created art.

“...Lightning-walker steps.”

Steps that walk on lightning.

It sounded a little extreme, but I couldn’t think of a better name at the moment.

Dash...

Finally, I landed safely on the ground.

The raging storm had stopped.