"Come on. Come on!"
After provoking enemies on both flanks into fighting each other, I sprinted ahead without looking back, pouring out my inner power like a flood. Soon, I could see the dark, cracked chasm I had spotted earlier in the distance.
'It's even bigger than I thought.'
A primal fear took hold at the sight of the massive black gorge, easily over a hundred meters wide.
It was the kind of abyss that made you instinctively feel that humans weren't meant to set foot near it—a bottomless void, impossible to gauge.
As I started to slow down about 200 meters from the rift, I suddenly sensed a powerful surge of mana.
When I turned my head for a quick glance, a small firebird was soaring toward me, growing rapidly in size.
In the blink of an eye, it had ballooned into a massive creature and was now bearing down on me like it was going to swallow me whole.
Even from a distance, I could feel the searing heat licking at my back.
'This is dangerous.'
I couldn't see the player controlling it, but there was no time to hesitate.
Clenching my teeth in desperation, I stretched my body forward and hurled myself into the dark ravine without a second thought.
-Kyaaaaaaaah!
The firebird, missing me by a hair's breadth, let out a piercing screech as it scattered into the air.
Now I was in a predicament, faced with an unknown enemy and unfamiliar magic.
I'd leapt into this unknowable gap out of sheer urgency—but I couldn't tell whether that had been a good decision.
-Thud!
A dull thump echoed as a sharp pain pierced my chest.
At the same time, I gritted my teeth and grabbed onto whatever I could reach, but all I felt were jagged, rough rocks cutting into my hands. I couldn't stop my body from being pulled downward by gravity.
'Damn it!'
I felt hot, sticky blood trickling from my hands as I kicked out with all my might.
If I just kept falling like this, no amount of martial arts training would save my body.
Thankfully, my toes brushed against a ledge.
I pushed off the wall with all the strength in my legs, and my body shot toward the opposite side.
Maximizing my movement technique, I slammed my fist into the opposite cliff wall.
My lighter body weight, combined with the momentum of my push, allowed me to strike with decent force—and my fist drove into the rock.
-Crack!
The sound of the wall breaking and my arm fracturing rang out simultaneously.
"Kgh!"
A scream tried to tear its way out of my throat, but I bit down and held it in.
"Urgh!"
Using my uninjured hand to grab a protruding rock and support my weight, I tried to pull my arm free—but the pain was unimaginable.
My broken arm was swelling fast and turning soft; I had to get it out quickly.
Once I yanked it free, dizziness swept over me, and I nearly lost my grip with my remaining hand.
"Haa… Haa…"
My heart was pounding like mad, and I was gasping for air.
I couldn't move the broken arm at all.
Even the slightest movement made it feel like it was about to fall off—so painful I felt like I might black out.
But the enemies weren't going to give me time to recover.
I groped around with my feet, searching for a foothold. Once I steadied myself, I carefully let go with my hand.
Losing balance now meant falling straight into the endless abyss behind me.
Slowly, I reached for my broken arm and opened a pocket dimension, pulling out a recovery scroll. I turned my head and bit down on it.
The message that appeared—[Do you want to use this?]—had never looked more infuriating.
Pressed against the jagged cliff face, I hit the confirm button with my nose.
The pain that had been tormenting me began to ease.
When I carefully tested my injured arm, it moved—clumsily, but it moved.
The pain lingered like a bad sprain, but the bone seemed to have fused properly.
From that point on, I began crawling down the cliff using my hands and feet.
-Rip!
-Tear!
I could hear my clothes ripping and my body scraping against the harsh rock surface, but I had no time to worry about minor wounds.
I had to get down quickly and prepare for the enemies that could chase me at any moment.
'Once I get down there… you're all dead.'
In broad daylight, an invisibility cloak is just a fragile piece of cloth. It offers neither effect nor function.
"But the true power of the Cloak of Stealth is revealed in darkness."
"And although it was broad daylight, this deep ravine had enough darkness to bring out that power."
-Wuuuung!
A sound, like a hornet fiercely flapping its wings, echoed from above.
"Hm?"
Reflexively lifting his head, he saw small spheres of light beginning to form and fall.
'Ah, shit!'
Seowoon barely managed to swallow the curse that rose to his lips, his limbs suddenly moving busily.
Fortunately, he had already moved quite far from the spot he had initially jumped from, so the falling spheres of light passed by and lit up an irrelevant area.
But he couldn't afford to relax—his urgency was only natural, since his location could be revealed at any moment by sheer bad luck.
And then—
[The third location is revealed.]
'Really… now?'
-Fwoooosh.
Ignoring his pitiful protest, a red pillar of light shot up into the sky above him.
At the same time, multiple fireballs began swelling in size and descending from above, entering his field of vision.
"Goddamn."
He muttered a short but very heartfelt curse, and let go.
In that brief moment, countless thoughts raced through his mind.
Scenes from judo falls he'd seen on TV, or using an umbrella like a parachute…
While these pointless thoughts flickered through his mind, he instinctively activated his movement technique to the fullest.
It was a purely instinctual judgment—that reducing his weight might help lessen the damage even a little.
After about three seconds of falling, he thought, 'Okay, that's enough.'
At four seconds, he thought, 'Maybe I'm still alright.'
At five seconds, he wondered, 'Will my remaining scrolls be enough to recover from this?'
And then, finally, the floating sensation ended.
-SPLAAAASH!
As his body hit the water, an indescribable wave of pain exploded throughout him.
Thanks to the movement technique shielding his body with internal energy, the pain was just barely manageable.
The pain spread through him like a lightning strike, making it difficult to move freely.
But he couldn't just stay still as his breath caught—he flailed his arms and legs desperately to regain control of his body.
With the water lit up around him, unsettling sounds began echoing from every direction.
-Pop! Sizzle!
The fireballs relentlessly crashed into the water, burning out with dying hisses, as if urging him to stop struggling and just die already to drop his items.
Driven by sheer defiance, he moved his aching limbs faster, slicing through the water.
After swimming for a while, his fingers finally brushed against the bottom, and he managed to pull himself out of the water.
The moment he emerged, he quickly pulled out the Cloak of Stealth and two recovery scrolls.
Only after donning the cloak and tearing through both scrolls did his body recover somewhat.
Considering how blood had kept welling up into his mouth while he was swimming, it was clear that his condition had been far from good.
"Phew."
Watching more fireballs occasionally plop into the water in the distance, he let out a sigh.
-Crack! Pop!
Maybe his freshly healed body was still stiff—he cracked his neck and stretched, his eyes gleaming.
"You're all dead. Come on, come on! You little—"
His voice unintentionally rose with excitement, and he swallowed the rest of his sentence.
Dozens of white light orbs were still falling from above, but as he stepped back a few paces, moving away from the light, his figure melded back into the darkness.
After a long barrage, the magic bombardment finally ceased.
No wonder—after all, the ravine he had thrown himself into was far too vast.
Even if they came down to search on foot, it would take a long time. Raining down blind magic from above would never be enough to kill him.
[The fourth location is revealed.]
-Fwoooosh.
Yet another pillar of light shot up, but Seowoon remained perfectly calm, unshaken.
Even as new spells flew in the moment the pillar appeared, he casually dodged them without much thought.
From such a long distance, those spells weren't anything impressive.
Simply widening the gap was enough to avoid them.
'If you think you can come down, go ahead and try.'
"It's best we retreat for now," said the mage.
But the knight, dragging his chainsword on the ground, shook his head.
"You're saying we should give up after coming this far?"
The knight's stubborn response gave the mage a headache, but he calmly began trying to persuade him.
"We're not the only ones who've seen that guy's position. There are probably more than a few players rushing over there. If we get greedy here, we might end up having to face them all."
"I'm not afraid."
Only then did the mage realize he had been trying to persuade the knight in the wrong way.
These damn brutes were ignorant fools who didn't know how to use their heads.
He had forgotten that this was a race that took pride in their ignorance, calling it honor and courage.
"Then what do you propose we do? I don't have the skill to climb down this valley."
The mage gave up and plopped down on the ground in exaggerated defeat, prompting the knight to speak up cautiously.
"Well… I heard that 5th-circle mages know how to use flight magic."
Of course, it wasn't that he hadn't learned the Fly spell.
But among the many mages out there, very few actually floated around in the sky.
Suicide Spell.
That's what mages called the Fly spell in their own slang.
Once you used Fly, no matter how skilled you were at casting, you couldn't perform double casting.
In other words, you could only use Fly and nothing else.
That meant a physically weak mage would be left completely exposed.
It was a spell used only in dire emergencies, when your life was truly on the line.
Even then, you'd use it with the mindset of "live or die."
Sure, it let you fly—but it wasn't even fast. That made you an easy target, vulnerable even to low-level spells.
It looked impressive but was ultimately impractical.
That was Fly.
"Are you telling me to die?"
"Ahem! It's pitch-black down there anyway. How would the enemy even spot us to attack?"
"I suppose so… But what if he can see us? We could die without even lifting a finger."
"What kind of ability would a guy like that possibly have?"
Mages are, by nature, a race that enjoys the play of thought. That's why they excel at deep thinking and calculation.
That's also why his reason told him it was time to retreat.
But the knight's next words paralyzed that reason.
"Seeing all that fuss, it must be a good item. Who knows? Maybe it's an incredible magic tome. I got this fine sword just from a dwarf's house."
The knight held up his chainsword.
It was indeed shocking to find a high-level enchanted weapon just lying around in some house.
If the knight could get something that good, surely the mage could as well.
That greed made up his mind.
"Fine. I'll just fly down there, then…"
"Ah, don't worry about me. I'll crawl down somehow."
"Wearing that heavy armor?"
"As if."
With that, the knight removed his armor, stuffed it into his subspace storage, and burst into hearty laughter in nothing but white underpants and a shirt.
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