Chapter 10 – Gonna Fly Now

After the meal, Karlo was about to set off again.

“Make sure you take care of yourself, eh?” Chuck said as he handed him the package. “This tundra might seem pretty safe, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. You probably have just enough daylight to make it to Green Village by tonight.”

“Thank you, Chuck. I hope we meet again someday,” Karlo replied.

“I’m sure we will! I don’t know what you did to Tiana, but ever since you came back she keeps on looking at you,” Chuck laughed with a boisterous voice.

With her still expressionless face, Tiana punched Chuck in the arm, which he seemed to be completely unaffected by.

“We’ll probably set off soon ourselves. Good luck brother!”

And with that, Karlo left.

“Haha, he is a strange one,” Chuck spoke aloud. “This newest batch of outsiders just arrived, and he’s already getting caught up in trouble. He shouldn’t have even been able to get out of Green Village, I wonder how he managed that? Thinking about it, he’s really lucky he’s still in the protection period... But seriously, Tiana, why’d you keep looking at him?”

She turned her face away, “He had... really nice clothes.”

Chuck agreed, “Damn right he did.”

***

As he walked, Karlo thought back to when the polar bear had appeared. He was completely helpless. Even those travelers could have easily killed him if they wanted to.

It reminded him that this wasn’t some fairyland. The people here were powerful and dangerous, the animals even more so.

Karlo clenched his fist. If he wanted to survive here, he had to find a way to become strong, and fast. But he didn’t just want to survive, he wanted to be great. And being great meant being better than everyone else.

Filled with motivation, he walked a little faster towards his destination. He decided that in everything he did, he would always strive to at least be a bit better than the next guy.

After a few hours of walking, Karlo could no longer maintain the vigilance he had started with. Chuck had said there was more to this tundra, and Karlo felt like he was telling the truth, but nothing had raised any suspicion yet.

“Maybe he wass lying after all.”

Karlo heard a hissing voice come from the ground. When he looked down, he saw a snake slithering between his feet. “Flip!” he jumped up in fright.

“Come now, don’t be sso frightened, I’m jusst an ordinary ssnow ssnake.”

“Those don’t exist! And snakes don’t talk, except... the Devil?!”

“Hahaha, human, I can tell you’re an outssider. You know nothing about thiss world. How would you know whether ssnakess talking is conssidered normal or not?”

“I...” Karlo had to admit, the snake got him there. Even so, his talent was screaming at him to not believe a word it said.

With such an intense reaction, Karlo decided the best option was to simply ignore the snake’s existence. He began walking away.

“Karlo. I wouldn't go that way if I were you.”

Karlo couldn't help but pause his steps. Somehow, the snake knew his name, and thinking back, what it first said was related to what he had been thinking about.

Despite his growing curiosity, his talent kept telling him that this snake was bad news. So he continued walking.

“Hisshiss,” its hissing almost sounded like laughter in Karlo’s ears. “The game beginss.”

After that, it didn’t move until Karlo could no longer see it past the horizon. But, he knew the story wouldn't end there.

[Challenge Appears!]

Suddenly, he got a notification.

[Challenge: A Devious Snake’s Trap

Objective: Escape the snow snake’s trap (0/1)

Time Limit: 1 Hour (00:59:58)

Reward: Technique: Qi Sense (Lv +1); Cultivation Grade F+ (Unlock +1)]

Suddenly forced into an anxiety-inducing situation, Karlo was thrown for a loop. But rereading the challenge, he realized that besides the time limit, it wasn’t all that different from a mission. On top of that, the reward was huge and perfect for his situation.

He had just been thinking that to be great, he had to be the best. And to be the best, he had to put himself in the hardest situations.

The only problem was that night was coming soon, and Karlo didn’t like the idea of being stuck out here in the dark. He had to get this over with quickly. Even as he thought, the time kept ticking down.

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He had a theory that, besides money, missions only gave rewards related to the task of the mission, and he assumed challenges would be similar. If that was the case, the fact that he already had Qi Sense should prove very useful.

‘Qi Sense!’ he activated it.

With the technique active, he could see that beneath the snow there were square tiles made from Qi and placed sporadically all around him.

He assumed they were something similar to land mines. But thanks to his Qi Sense, he could avoid them easily.

“Oh? You already have Qi ssensse?” the snakes voice echoed around him. “How interessting. How about thiss then?”

Suddenly, the Qi tiles began disappearing and reappearing in different spots. Only, they would leave a phantom of the Qi that had been there, making it almost impossible to tell the safe spots from the dangerous.

Karlo’s first thought was to try and level up Qi Sense as he had done for Qi Infusion, but on second thought, he realized he would run out of Qi long before he leveled it up. In fact, checking his Qi reserves, they had already been reduced to 8. That was 3 Qi in only 10 minutes, maybe even less.

Even his talent, which should've told him which tiles were dangerous, only indicated danger in all directions.

‘Well, there had to be a limit somewhere.’

So he had no choice but to find an alternative method.

‘Think Karlo, think! There must be a way. The reward is quite substantial, but it isn’t much different from the reward for Mrs. Dandy’s mission. In fact, it’s probably worse. If the reward provides any indication of the difficulty of the mission, this one must be easier than that had been.’

Karlo had chosen to ignore the fact that what he was facing wasn’t a mission, but a challenge. Although, in this case, it didn’t make much of a difference. He felt that the main differences between challenges and missions, were probably that challenges were unavoidable and had time limits.

Logically, that should also mean an increased reward. If that was the case, and this was the increased reward, the challenge should be much easier than the Qi infusion mission.

Karlo realized he had been using Qi Sense as a crutch. Most other players wouldn’t have this technique, yet they still completed missions just as he did. He even felt that most players would gain Qi Sense for the first time from a mission like this. That being the case, there must be a way to complete this mission without using the technique.

He decided to turn it off.

Looking around, all he could see was the snowy ground looking exactly the same as it had been.

Karlo realized the snake’s control of Qi was incredible. He thought that he would work on gaining that technique himself at some point.

But back to the task at hand. He noticed three key points: 1. Rather than generating Qi tiles everywhere around him, the snake kept moving them around; 2. It seemed the snake was unable to put a tile directly beneath his feet; and 3. He had assumed they were landmines, but in reality, he had no idea what the Qi tiles actually did.

Based on point 1, Karlo concluded the snake could only use so many Qi tiles at once, and based on point 3, he decided to perform an experiment. For now, he didn’t know how to use the information from point 2.

Taking a ball of snow in his hands, he activated Qi Sense for a split second and threw it at the brightest tile he could see.

Unfortunately, he missed it. But surprisingly, the place he did hit suddenly exploded.

‘That settles that,’ he thought.

Karlo wondered whether the fact that one of the tiles had exploded meant the snake would have one less to work with. Too bad there was no way to confirm. Also, he couldn’t even be sure that the spot that had just exploded was safe, as another tile could move there at any time.

But at least now he knew that the tiles did explode with pressure on top, just like landmines.

If only he had a stick of some sort he might’ve been able to escape easily. Karlo just now noticed how badly equipped he was. Then again, the snake had made the challenge far more difficult when it knew he had Qi Sense, a stick probably wouldn’t even work.

‘Damn it, I don’t have time for this!’

He made a bunch of snowballs and, pulling the front of his coat out with one hand, he put them inside.

“Hisshiss, what are you doing?”

Karlo laughed. “You’ll see.”

He again activated Qi Sense for a moment to confirm the direction he should be going. Then he took a deep breath, in and out.

‘Now!’

As fast as he could, he took a snowball and threw it at the ground in front of him. As soon as it touched, he took a step forward. While doing that, he took the next snowball and did the same thing.

When he got into a rhythm, he was almost running. Just before the fifth step, though, when the snowball hit the ground, it exploded.

Fortunately, Karlo’s reflexes were far faster than they had been on Earth. He had also been wary of that tile because of his talent, so before it had gone off, he had already jumped into the air.

The explosion propelled him further upward, and only when it was over did he land on the spot where the explosion had been. Then he continued going forward. Although slightly injured, it didn’t hinder his speed.

He continued with this method, and when he reached the 20th step, he had an idea for if there was an explosion within the next 10 steps, which should be, by his count, the final ones.

Sure enough, on the 23rd step, the tile exploded. This time, instead of jumping upward like he had been, he jumped as far forward as he could manage.

The explosion propelled him even further, and he passed over the 30th and final step without even taking it.

Activating his Qi Sense to confirm, he saw that there were no tiles in front of him, and then a notification came up:

[Challenge Complete: A Devious Snake’s Trap

Objective: Escape the snow snake’s trap (1/1)

Time Limit: 1 Hour (00:33:49)

Reward: Technique: Qi Sense (Lv +1); Cultivation Grade F+ (Unlock +1)

Claim Reward?]

“Hahaha, what do you have to say to that, you damn snake!” Karlo yelled with ecstasy.

“Hisshiss.”

Hearing that sound, Karlo’s face paled.

“Do you think if my powerss hadn’t been ssupressed, you would have ssurvived?” the snake's voice echoed with rage.

“Esspecially with such a barbaric method?! Come back a month from now, and I’ll kill you with a ssingle sswipe of my tail!”

For all its threats, Karlo realized that for some reason it could no longer harm him. Despite wanting to, he didn’t brag or antagonize the snake further and instead just left.

He had wasted half an hour on this creature, his Qi was low, and he was bruised and burnt. Also, he had to make it back to Green Village by the end of the day.

When he claimed the reward, another notification came up:

[Challenge Reward Claimed!

Progress towards unlocking F+ Grade Cultivation: (1/3)]

He supposed his Qi Sense must've leveled up too.

Karlo sighed and began jogging towards Green Village.

As he went along and regenerated Qi, he began feeling slightly better, but 3 hours later, when he caught sight of the walls of the village, it was almost completely dark and he was dead tired.

"Grrr..."

But hearing a beast growl he was suddenly energized, and he ran with all his strength to the village gate.

The person standing there was the same guard he had seen on the first day.

“Who goes there?”

“It’s me, the outsider, Karlo Berrio!” he shouted while breathing heavily.

“Impossible, there is no record of Karlo Berrio leaving the-” The guard seemed to have a way to check his identity. “How the hell did you get outside?”

“Let me in and I’ll tell you all about it.”