Ice Age (1)
“Belba. Hey, Belba. Give me a title next to my name, like in a game.”
“[...What kind of title?]”
“Mhm, not bad.”
I grinned, admiring the flashy title glittering beside my name. It made me feel as if I were about to get bonus stats.
“[You don't get anything like that... Besides, why 'Adventurer'? Are you going somewhere?]”
“Yeah. This time, I'm heading out to an entirely different region.”
“[Finally!]”
She used to insist it was far too dangerous, adamantly trying to stop me, but now she was cheering with glee. That was how thoroughly prepared I had become.
I had stayed for roughly two more months, honing my stats and combat instincts. Spreading my growth evenly had slowed down my leveling, but even so, I had climbed two whole levels.
And most importantly, this!
Just the fact that I had purchased the Premium Void Storage made my heart race. As expected, it lacked features like keeping perishables fresh, but the simple fact that stored items added zero weight to my body was already an absolute jackpot.
It seemed to work by sending physical matter into an imaginary dimension. Truly fascinating. Looking through the shop, I had seen things like spellbooks too; I hoped that one day, I would be able to use dimensional magic like that myself.
At any rate, with a modest supply of rations packed inside, I was ready to set out on my journey.
My heightened senses, especially my vision, revealed a far broader world to me. Looking down from the peak of a high mountain across this vast, unending continent, I could see snowfields cloaked in ice, volcanoes roiling with fire and magma, deep dark oceans, and sheer, plunging canyons—all resting in silent majesty, untouched by human hands.
For better or worse, as the only human in this land, how could I not explore it? Wait for me, world! Here I come!
“[Still, please be careful. You haven't faced monsters from other terrains yet, so there's no telling what variables might crop up.]”
Eliminating those variables was exactly what all my preparations had been for. In this jungle, excluding colossal dinosaurs and their ilk, I had hunted down and killed most small- and medium-sized monsters. I had mastered weapon proficiency and the nuances of manipulating mana through sheer physical practice, and I had even run myself through grueling, extreme training regimens designed for the worst-case scenarios—things like dealing with sudden bodily urges mid-combat, dirt kicked into my eyes, or fighting while my vision wobbled violently from a blow to the head.
I had simulated nearly every conceivable worst-case disaster I could reproduce and devised counterstrategies for each. I had prepared so relentlessly that Belba had practically wept, begging me to stop.
Truth be told, there were still things I could prepare, but enough was enough. Time to get moving. My patience had reached its limit. If I spent any more time preparing here, I was going to drop dead from stress.
“[Shall we depart, Adventurer?]”
“All right! Let's go!”
A cool breeze brushed through my hair. Dappled sunlight filtered down through the green canopy above. It felt wonderful—almost like going on a picnic. Relocating to an unknown region, something that had filled me with vague dread at first, now felt like a sweet reward.
You have pioneered a new region.
Bonus Strength +1
“Huh? You have a function like that?”
“[Nope. But it feels nice, doesn't it? You barely look at your status window these days, so I had to do something.]”
Ah. For a second, my hopes actually soared.
Hearing such a low-effort joke the moment I set foot in this snowfield felt like a bad omen. Belba possessed no function that could increase my physical stats. Like a mirror, she merely quantified and displayed the growth of my flesh. Even leveling up was simply a phenomenon generated by this body of mine, the mechanics of which I still couldn't begin to fathom.
More importantly, it seemed to be getting warmer. I shrugged off one of the thick layers I had bundled up in. Just five minutes ago, the biting cold had my lips shivering, yet now beads of sweat were trickling down my forehead.
My body temperature was changing far too quickly. Could this be...?
“Is my body adapting?”
I bent down and thrust my bare hand into the deep snowdrifts. It was cold, but that was all. It didn't feel like it would give me frostbite in the slightest. Remembering how my fingers had gone stiff during snowball fights with friends back in my childhood, this defied all logic.
“[That's right. You've developed a property that repels the cold from penetrating your skin. It seems to be a form of resistance... If you venture into even colder areas, that ability will likely strengthen as well.]”
“Resistance?”
“[Adaptation takes many forms. Submitting and absorbing it, or resisting and pushing it away. In essence, neither is inherently different. Yeon-ah's body fundamentally chooses the more efficient route. Right now, it judged that repelling the chill was preferable to taking it in and growing accustomed to it.]”
“Thanks for the explanation.”
Belba always enriched me with knowledge from other dimensions. Seeing her grow sharper day by day, I couldn't help but wonder if she would know literally everything by the time the main story finally began.
I closed my eyes, seized the frigid chill bouncing off my skin, and deliberately drew it into my body. In an instant, the cold overwhelmed me, and a freezing torment I hadn't felt until now dug deep into my flesh.
My teeth chattered. My entire frame vibrated as if struck by an earthquake.
Just what temperature is it out here?
I had guessed from my breath crystallizing in the air, but it had to be several dozen degrees below zero at the very least.
“[What in the world are you doing?! Why undo what you just adapted to...?]”
Calm down. I was just testing it out to see how dangerous it really was.
Banishing the cold once more, I trudged across the snowfields in my lightened attire. No matter how much I thought about it, there was something fundamentally wrong with this body. The bastard who threw me here must have engineered it, but if that were the case, I couldn't fathom why they had handed me such an absurd physical vessel. Was their goal not to torment me? Or was there another motive I knew nothing about?
Lost in thought, I continued onward until I came across a colossal mass of ice rising like the tip of an iceberg. Its surface was slick and impossibly hard. When I drove my spear into it with all my might, it failed to leave so much as a scratch.
“This is weird.”
There was no way its intrinsic hardness alone could produce this result. At the end of the day, it was just a chunk of ice. My guess was that it was protected by some special power.
“Am I right?”
“[Spot on. I wasn't entirely sure, but to think it's really a Dimension Stone...]”
A Dimension Stone. Another unfamiliar term. At first, I thought this was just a game of surviving in the age of dinosaurs, but it was steadily morphing into full-blown fantasy.
Hmm... judging by the name, it sounds pretty important. Is it?
“[Yes. A Dimension Stone acts like a conduit connecting this world to other dimensions. It radiates Dimensional Power across the realm, nurturing resistance against other planes. However, if there are too many, otherplanar beasts can invade—and if there are too few, the dimension will seal shut entirely, so it requires immense care.]”
The moment I heard her explanation, I reached out and placed my hand on the iceberg. It wasn't cold at all. Or rather, instead of not being cold, it felt completely unremarkable.
Just how long had I been standing there? At a certain point, a bizarre rumbling sound began churning in my head, like putting your ear against someone's stomach. It sounded like an indistinct whisper, or perhaps an eerie wind.
And then, moments later, the energy nestled within the iceberg began to flow into me—slowly, very slowly.
Belba let out a shriek.
“[What in the world are you doing right now?!]”
“What?”
“[I told you, if there are no Dimension Stones, the world will seal shut completely! It's incredible that you can absorb Dimensional Power, but... if the Dimension Stones vanish, I'll be kicked out of here! I won't be able to intervene at all!]”
According to Belba, Dimension Stones were extraordinarily rare conduits capable of diffusing Dimensional Power across the entire realm, and draining their power would shut the world away completely, leaving behind a dead husk.
Curiosity welled up within me.
Roughly how many Dimension Stones are supposed to be here? You said having too many was dangerous too, right?
“[Going by the size of the one you're looking at... about five would be ideal. Ten or more would start getting dangerous.]”
“Is that so?”
I focused mana into my legs and leapt straight up. In a flash, the clouds rushed toward me.
Lately, Belba had stuck so close to my side that she was oblivious to what was happening in the distance. When I had asked why, she'd mumbled something about wanting to stay beside a reliable friend rather than babysit faint, distant possibilities—claiming it was better to stick close in case unexpected variables arose. Because of that, she seemed entirely unaware of this region's peculiarities.
The moment that so-called Dimensional Power entered my body, I knew it on instinct. Like magnets attracting and repelling each other, the Dimension Stone and I shared a bizarre resonance, allowing me to grasp the approximate positions and numbers of other stones nearby.
Goosebumps broke out across my flesh. Just how many are there?
“[...This makes no sense.]”
Icebergs clustered together at intervals of a few hundred meters. Every single one of them was a Dimension Stone. Some were small as toys, while others towered like genuine mountains. And the total quantity of Dimensional Power locked inside them would dwarf tens of thousands of the one I had just touched.
“With that many, something should have happened already. Why hasn't there been any reaction?”
Belba pondered my question for a moment, then cried out as realization dawned on her.
“[Dormancy! They're dormant! I forgot this is a primordial dimension. Those Dimension Stones aren't active yet, but when the time comes, they'll scatter their Dimensional Power all at once like an explosion! That's when the Great Cataclysm begins!]”
The Great Cataclysm... The sheer ominousness radiating from that term was suffocating.
I've got a bad feeling a meteor is going to drop or something.
“[Something will drop, all right.]”
“Huh?”
“[An entire other world is going to crash right into this one!]”