Jump, scan, jump, scan, jump, scan. It was like a game of momentum. Each kick off from the dirt wall was a new direction. If he wanted to go faster, then he needed to loosen up in control. Faster, faster, faster. Go faster to sharpen his Qi Sense. His activation time of Qi Sense grew faster. He could have exchanged speed to maintain it automatically but that was lame. To act as fast as possible and still be able to operate Qi Sense was the best way to gain understanding. To walk and use it meant nothing. If this didn’t become second nature, then there was no point to any of this. He would simply be a slave to the System.
He was two-thirds there. He began to feel the warmth of the fog. His boots crunched up against the wall for just a millisecond too long and he proceeded to launch himself off with greater vigour. Foundation Establishment was running at full capacity. Qi Sense was slowly beginning to deploy automatically.
The warm light touched his back. The hole was reaching its end. The hole became wider in size and he bounced off after. At the final jump, he reached for the edge—
“Haah….”
His fingers crunched into the soil and he pulled himself up. Dasha Pang emerged after three days of training. Between the meditation and physical training, his resolve and understanding of himself deepened. Nothing but him and soil stayed at the bottom of the hole. Not even the dirt, which his lightning forcibly made stagnant, interfered with his concentration. Due to the higher quality of Qi in the atmosphere, even so far deep, he was able to meditate for a record of nine hours. Before, he limited himself to one or two hour meditation cycles for the sake of efficiency. He had a schedule: wake up, meditate, eat, exercise, then get to work at the Dream Meth. He often employed two to three hour power naps and made up for any potential sleep debt and repercussions with a full nine hours of sleep on the weekend. It was a controlled schedule.
This week, Dasha broke that schedule. He rose from the hole that led to the end of this world and came back smarter. ‘I was hoping to level it up. I suppose it’s not that simple.’ He raised the black gauntlets, crackling. ‘But I’m close. I can feel my sensing capabilities on the verge breaking through. It’s right there. I just need a tiny little push.’
Annoyingly, the mist still blocked his Qi Sense. But if there was anything he got out of this, it was that Qi Sense did activate at a very short range. Dasha closed his eyes. ‘Yes…the range is absurdly small. Less than two centimetres but it’s there. I’ve gotten so much better at Qi Sense that I’m able to leak through the tiniest gap in the mist.’
He struck the air. Like last time, the mist didn’t move in the slightest. ‘But…how come that wasn’t the case for the Will-o’-wisp? There has to be some tight connection for it to do something that I cannot. I’m stronger than it by a longshot. It’s not a matter of power.’
There was a trick. Somewhere, somehow, there was a way to get rid of this mist.
Finnish mythology wasn’t the solution. If so, time to move onto another mythology. To do that, he needed to find a Will-o’-wisp or a Witte Wieven. Either would be fine. The rumour was that the Witte Wieven was a rare encounter. In fact, if it wasn’t for Xavier outright confirming its existence, Dasha would have assumed it was a hallucination from prolonged exposure to the mist. The stories on “White Woman” were so far in between that it was more similar to a children’s folktale.
Invisibility was flicked on. Then, he burst forward. Time to really cover ground. Trails of black lightning followed, the lightning too slow to keep up with his speed. The Seven-league Boots was said to take seven leagues per step. The distance that would take an ordinary man one hour to walk was covered in a moment’s notice for Dasha Pang. He encountered his first set of players. From their perspective, an intense wind rushed past them. For Dasha, they were flicks that he was not interested in.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
He blitzed between locations for an hour. The area was massive. Dasha counted up to thirty players, some in groups and others alone. They were scattered far enough to prevent them from meeting for days. Some players were chopping wood probably because of the intrinsic value. Xavier told him to do the same.
Dasha stopped directly in front of a redwood tree. Over two hundred feet tall and fifteen feet in diameter, it took a while for the current players to chop it. The magical properties of the wood made for good wands, apparently. ‘I might as well do it now. ‘ His hand became sharp and he sliced the redwood tree in half. What took other players hours to do, Dasha did in seconds. The massive tree began to fall over. Two hundred feet of mighty wood tilted over, a shadow casting over him. Dasha didn’t worry. He casually walked to the side and waited for the tree to fall over.
THUMP!
Two hundred feet of wood slammed into the ground and the mist parted slightly. Dasha, who had been waiting with his arm in his gi, narrowed his eyes behind his mask. ‘The mist shifted.’ Quickly, he cut the wood up and threw it into his inventory. Immediately after, he bounced to the next tree. It was quite a distance away. Dasha didn’t care, his four fingers charging for a clean slice.
THUMP!
The second supersized tree fell. Upon crashing, the mist shifted ever so slightly. He squinted. Was it just him but the mist also seemed to thin out.
‘Why? Why would that be the case? Unless…ah! The redwood trees power the mist. They possess immense durability and are dispersed far enough so that no player could possibly destroy them all.’
No wonder no one was able to complete this ludicrous gate. Those redwood trees were gargantuan. No player could destroy them in one fell swoop. Even if they did possess the destructive capacity, navigating through the mist was impossible. Players would end up going in circles and track back before they knew where they were going.
Dasha was an anomaly. The Seven-league Boots granted him immense travel speed and he wore the gauntlets of Thor himself. Then there was the most vital element: his internal GPS. He knew exactly where he was going. He wasn’t just dashing around like a madman for no reason, he was analyzing and imprinting the map of the region in his head. Everything was slowly coming together. All the trees he encountered, all the people he saw, he remembered it all.
Just in case, he slammed a fist into the ground surrounding the stump of the massive tree. No roots. ‘In other words, the trees are more like beacons.’
“Ah, at last you’ve arrived.”
A green Will-o’-wisp drifted forward, parting the mist. Dasha waited patiently for it to settle and charge its attack. Green flames struck him. Dasha didn’t move. There was no need because this little ghost of light could do nothing. The difference in stats was too much. Dasha’s defence was over six hundred. The Will-o’-wisp’s strongest attack likely capped out at two hundred or so.
The green flames reminded him of the agitating warmth of long ago; of an orphanage that stared at him and shut him away.
“Boring.”
As a scientist, there was nothing to decipher. “Black Cards.” He casually tossed the cards, effortlessly flawless in the technique, and walked away. The Will-o’-wisp was torn apart.
[ Receive:
24,000 XP ]
“I have to search for those trees.” The muscles in his thighs coiled up and became magnified by the Qi swirling through. The Seven-league Boots glowed yellow. His mind conjured up the map of the region. So far, it was shaping to be a flat plain with no consistency or inconsistency. Redwood trees were sprinkled through the region and nothing more.
In other words, Dasha was going to have to brute force this.
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
THUMP!
The mist that spread from the desolation of the tree was magnificent. However…
‘Still nothing. I thought I would get a main objective.’ Along the way, he saw balls of light and deftly ignored them. ‘Maybe…’
He ran off again, this time killing any and all Will-o’-wisps that were in or off his path. Even if another group was fighting it, he burst forward, struck it with his gauntlet, and went on. Confusion was left behind. Dasha did not care. He had to keep killing.
[ Main Objective found! ]
[ Gate 13 : Silent Forest
Main Objective: Kill all the redwood trees and the Will-o’-wisps in the area! Kill them all! KILL THEM ALL!
Prize Pool: 1,000,000 XP, 1,000,000 PP
SPECIAL OBJECTIVE: ?
SPECIAL PRIZE POOL: ? ]
‘Destroying thirty redwood trees and thirty Will-o’-Wisps: that was the condition to unlock the main objective. But…what about the special and hidden objectives?’
He was missing something. But what?