A gunshot rang out and rather than a mighty roar, there was a terrifying cacophony as dozens of projectiles simultaneously broke the sound barrier. A group of frostcloak wolves howled in pain as their ranks were devastated by a hail of steel feathers. The ones that weren’t maimed too badly gathered ice mist and snow into a smokescreen and fled. Their aggressor didn’t chase them, choosing instead to finish off the wolves who couldn’t run before they had a chance to make a last stand. They switched to a long rifle and accurately shot each of the injured wolves in the head.
Lowering Seeker, Jayce took a look at the destruction his latest weapon had caused and pressed his lips together. For the first time in a while, he remembered just how surreal his current situation was. It would have been impossible for him to imagine creating such a scene less than two months ago—back when he was on Earth.
The frosty ground in front of him was smattered with chips and tiny pits, some of which still had steel wing sparrow feathers stuck in them. Amidst that collateral damage was a half-dozen wolves who were also covered in ‘chips’ and ‘pits’ along with some feathers. The cause of this destruction was a fat and unwieldy weapon that resembled a mortar without a stand. There was an upward facing grip at its butt as well as a bar halfway across the barrel, much like a minigun would have. Its jagged surface was made from the glistening black chitin of the Frozen Expanse’s cannon beetles. On one side, a plate of said chitin could be opened to load ammunition into the chamber. As for what that ammunition was, the weapon didn’t seem to care.
Big Eater
Energy Requirement: First Gate
A two-handed cannon whose creation was inspired by a woolen ponderus’s hefty appetite and physique. Can fire any physical object loaded into the chamber. This cannon is slow to fire but its power is great.
Miraculously, the soul that had guided this weapon’s creation was that oversized blob of hair and meat that Jayce had helped Stout process. Jayce had handed it off to Marin, who fixed its most glaring flaws in only a couple days. Even though it wasn’t polished, Jayce was pretty satisfied with this cannon.
Adding to his satisfaction was the message he had received after executing those wolves.
Marksman has reached level 20.
You have gained an ability: Marksman – Marksman’s Alacrity.
Marksman’s Alacrity
Cost: Mental Energy
Enter a temporary state where your body is perfectly in tune with your thoughts and muscle memory. While aiming, reloading, and firing a weapon, your body will naturally move to make corrections. Non class related actions will also be corrected to a lesser degree. This ability can only be maintained for one minute plus an extra thirty seconds per ten class levels. Repeated activation will cause severe mental strain.
Soul Forger has reached level 10.
Your mental energy has improved (+10).
Your mana capacity has improved (+15).
After seeing his newest ability, Jayce breathed out a sigh of relief. Almost a full week had passed since Jayce made his bet with Leon, which meant he had only been performing affinity training for about two weeks. No matter how hard he practiced, two weeks wasn’t enough time to guarantee that he would get the ability he wanted. Jayce knew he was going to hit his class’s threshold soon and he felt that the training he’d done was starting to feel routine, so he visited the Frozen Expanse to bite the bullet and test his luck. If he hadn’t gotten the right ability, then he would have had to continue training until his Marksman class hit 25.
Said training involved Jayce firing at different targets over and over without stopping to aim. Jayce wasn’t a perfect shot to begin with and he was acutely aware that he lacked a gunman’s reflexes. These reflexes would normally develop over a lifetime of handling weapons and this training served as a signal to develop an ability that covered for his lack of experience.
Now, if it was a matter of life or death, Jayce was confident that he would never miss a shot. He could even split his focus between other abilities and artifacts while aiming. When he thought about how he wanted to fight in the future, Jayce felt that the latter benefit was actually more impactful.
Jayce was also gratified to see that his Soul Forger class was starting to catch up to the other two. As he created more artifacts to add to his arsenal, the speed at which this class leveled would only grow.
Although, if he was being honest with himself, Jayce still didn’t fully understand how his classes leveled up. Mize had only told him that classes needed to be stimulated through action and taught him a few guiding phrases such as, “A Marksman strives for efficiency in ranged combat.” The information in Snowdrift’s library was also very vague about this aspect of the Nexus system, only listing which combat styles suited each class. Jayce was almost positive that Mize had a much deeper understanding of the system than Snowdrift’s villagers, so he placed more weight on the small number of clues she’d given him.
It was possible to level up and open gates without understanding anything about the system, but Jayce still wished he knew more. He couldn’t help but worry that he was missing out something, much like how the villagers didn’t know that special classes existed.
After cleaning up the battlefield, Jayce continued through the frostcloak wolves’ territory until he reached a ten-meter wide tunnel that sloped downwards. He retrieved a small data package from storage and checked it with his mental energy while examining the tunnel. Nodding to himself, Jayce muttered, “Alright. Depending on the monsters that spawn, it takes about an hour and a half to reach the entrance to this high-order area.”
The Frozen Expanse was an absolutely enormous dungeon that extended thousands of kilometers from its center near the jotun kingdom’s capital and not all of this territory was equally dangerous. The lowest level areas near the surface produced monsters with levels from 0 to 40 while deeper areas could spawn monsters at level 80, which was the limit of the third gate. At the same time, there were also high and low-order areas. Snowdrift had been purposely built on top of a low-order area, where monsters could only spawn with life orders at C-Rank or below. Maps of the Frozen Expanse were complicated but in general, traveling deeper underground would raise both the level and life orders of the monsters encountered.
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Of course, monsters wouldn’t always stay near where they spawned, which was why the Frozen Expanse was considered to be a very unsafe and unpredictable dungeon.
Today, Jayce had come to the Frozen Expanse to verify that there was a high-order area relatively close to Snowdrift’s entrance. He had already sought out Yule and asked him where certain materials grew in the dungeon, again. Because Leon wasn’t there to interrupt, Jayce successfully paid for a map that detailed the various monster territories and level zones around Snowdrift. It also gave him rough locations of where many materials could grow. Unfortunately, there was a reason why Yara never bothered to gather these materials herself, as they were all in high-order areas.
Looking down the long tunnel, Jayce found himself unwilling to leave so quickly. He hadn’t planned on exploring this area just yet, but after arriving with relative ease, he realized he hadn’t really confirmed any important information. With no knowledge of what he might face, he didn’t know how to prepare for his eventual return.
After weighing the pros and cons, Jayce began moving down the tunnel at a slow pace. His breath created small ephemeral clouds as he stalked along the frozen ground, carefully using all of his sensory abilities while he walked. It wasn’t long before he suddenly stopped and looked up. Jayce’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he started inching backwards without turning around. A soul had appeared right at the edge of his senses and, while he couldn’t see the creature it belonged to, Jayce felt an instinctual danger the moment it entered his perception.
A tremor swept out from the ceiling, followed by a small rockslide made of boulders and ice blocks. Jayce managed to escape being crushed or trapped on the wrong side of the tunnel, but he still didn’t feel safe. Through the dust and mist, Jayce witnessed an earthy brown sphere emerge from the rubble. The rock and ice that had fallen rose up and gathered around the sphere, flowing together to form four thick pairs of legs and an enormous round body. Jayce didn’t wait for this spider-like golem to coalesce before he bolted out of the tunnel.
Wind coiled around his body and his eyes turned red as he activated Bloodrage to boost his strength by a small amount. Soon, each of his light footsteps was matched by several earthshaking crashes. Jayce didn’t look back and as the Bands of Freedom reached their maximum boost, the monster’s thunderous footsteps became fainter. Half an hour later, Jayce stopped near an isolated pillar to catch his breath. The golem had long since turned around, but Jayce found it difficult to stay calm. It had been a while since he’d felt so close to death.
Jayce knew that if his mutated soul hadn’t sensed that monster or if Marin hadn’t upgraded the Bands of Freedom into a polished artifact, he would have died just like that. According to his Essence Appraisal ability, that monster was at the second gate, and it likely had a fairly high life order as well. It was almost certainly a wanderer, as the high-order area connecting to that tunnel supposedly capped monsters at level 40.
After he collected himself, Jayce decided to end his expedition there.
---
That night, Jayce collapsed onto his bed. His body was sweaty, his muscles were sore, and his newly increased mental energy had almost been fully drained. Jayce had poured all of the day’s frustrations into his nightly exercises and could barely move anymore. The encounter with that golem had reminded him that he was still far off from achieving a respectable level of power in the Upper Bound. Even though he knew that his growth would be a slow process, he couldn’t help but feel frustrated.
Those frustrations were also reflected in his dreams, where he faced several lethal situations back to back. Jayce had been having nightmares ever since he arrived on Caelum or, more accurately, ever since he was able to dream in the Upper Bound. These nightmares left him waking in a panic almost every morning but somehow, they never caused him to lose sleep. Jayce never thought too deeply about this condition, as he assumed it would eventually go away as he gathered enough strength.
While he slept, Jayce was inundated by the stomach-churning smell of the Fragmented Ruins’ flesh blobs, caught and executed by Weiss—who had appeared behind him like a shadow—and crushed by the spider golem after failing to escape. Things only started to deviate from their normal pattern while he was running from a thoroughly enraged Froker and noticed something strange about his current state. Jayce had escaped from Froker back when his Bloodrager class was only level 15, but in his dream, his levels had been updated and he even had his new artifacts.
Curious, Jayce activated Marksman’s Alacrity and twisted to fire behind himself with Seeker. Two crackling orbs of light appeared at the center of his pupils and even though he was firing at the hip, Jayce’s arms made subconscious adjustments to make his aim strike true. A high-caliber bullet slammed into Froker’s forehead, cracking his barrier and nearly sending him crashing to the ground. Because of his ferocious momentum, the jotun only stumbled before releasing a howl and charging forward with greater speed.
Jayce hastily dodged a hammer strike, only to realize that Froker had augmented his blow with a shockwave. A bone-rattling force slammed into Jayce’s body, sending him tumbling back like a ragdoll. Just like in his memories, this attack pierced through his barrier to ravage his vulnerable innards. The only silver lining was that he could ignore the pain with Bloodrage.
Not one for mercy, Froker rushed forward to hammer Jayce while he was down. The feral glint in his eye was soon replaced with a look of surprise and terror, as he stepped over a puddle of Jayce’s blood and suddenly found himself flying through the air. Jayce had also been blown over after activating Explosive Blood, but when the three-meter menace crashed to the ground, Jayce shakily stood up. The cannon, Big Eater, appeared in his hands and a dull blue light shone in its barrel while a low hum echoed out. When Froker saw that Jayce was preparing an attack, he sneered and protected his upper body with his arms. Though his barrier had been shattered, his skin was lit by a metallic sheen.
Time slowed as these combatants glared at each other and soon, the cannon’s humming reached its peak. Despite Marin’s upgrades, Big Eater still took a few seconds to fire. Its versatility and power allowed it to be usable, but Jayce knew that this weapon was practically useless in a fair duel. Froker had even peeked out before the cannon fired, realizing he could have stopped Jayce from firing if he had acted fast enough. Fortunately, this realization came too late, and over a dozen metal feathers tore into the jotun.
Because the Frozen Expanse’s mist had already been dispersed by their previous blows, Jayce saw the result of this volley clearly. Froker looked like a porcupine with so many steel flechettes embedded in his skin, but he was far from dead. His Warrior ability and S-Rank body were enough to guard against Jayce’s attack. Still, he had several bone-deep lacerations and his rapidly spilling blood had dyed him and surrounding ground a dark crimson. Froker tried to move, only to find that a foreign energy had infiltrated his body and paralyzed him. While the weapon was charging, Jayce had plenty of time to apply a paralysis tag.
Jayce switched to Seeker and fired, carving a fatal wound in Froker’s chest.
“I…underestimated…you,” Froker wheezed, his tone soaked with rage and defiance.
“I know.”
Back when Froker fought Marin, Jayce had seen him pull out several tricks. This giant acted like a brute, but he was actually very clever. Sadly, he hadn’t bothered bringing any of that intellect out when fighting a weakling like Jayce.
As the jotun exhaled for the last time, Jayce felt the dream around him collapse. When he regained his senses, he was in a cylindrical room whose walls were lined with rapidly flowing blood. Jayce looked up and saw three suns, one white, one purple, and one bright green.
“I’m back in that tower?” Jayce breathed, not quite believing it.
This tower had three forms and each of them represented one of his classes. Jayce had encountered this bizarre place in the middle of challenging the Gate of Acceptance, but he hadn’t been able to return until now.