The Wall of All Creation
After sending Lee Sia and Park Ji-hoo on their way, Seong Yujin left Chuiwolru with Vivian. That was after he had paid the proprietor a not-insignificant sum of credits for the wrecked annex.
"Where are we going?"
Vivian asked as she watched Yujin walk on without any explanation.
"We can't just lie around waiting for the kids to come back. Gotta go find a few useful things while we can."
"Useful things?"
She didn't understand.
"Ah, right. I haven't told you yet."
He had originally planned to explain everything once the others returned. But if he told Vivian now, she would pass it along just fine on her own.
"The 20th Floor is a place where opportunities pour down. Stretch the truth a little and even a rock you stub your toe on might turn out to be some kind of elixir."
Vivian's eyes lit up at that. She, too, seemed to find the word opportunity interesting.
"That bizarre skill you picked up earlier was one of them. If we search carefully, we can get more things of that level."
"Really?"
"Yeah. The place we're heading now is one of the spots where an opportunity is hidden."
"Where is it?"
"See that cliff over there?"
It was the very same sheer cliff he had pointed out to Kang Mu-hyun when they first arrived—the Heavenly Mirror Cliff.
"What can we get there?"
"Dunno."
Yujin shrugged. Vivian's expression shifted at once, curiosity giving way to the look she reserved for complete lunatics.
"I can roughly guess what you're thinking. I really don't know. That's just the kind of place it is."
The cliff rose like a mirror, perfectly clear and clean. A place this unreal demanded an equally unreal method of claiming its gifts.
"You'll understand once we get there. I'll explain on site."
Yujin kept walking without pause. It was quite far—far enough that from Unmonghyang the cliff had looked tiny. Once they left the city, both of them even began using mana.
"Don't you have a mount?"
"No."
"Why not buy one? From the look of it, you've got a few Coins stashed away."
"I do. Ten."
"…That's a lot."
When it came to anything involving money, she always had an absurd amount. Ten Coins already, on the mere 20th Floor? Even first-timeline Yujin hadn't managed that much. He almost wondered if she had the blessing of the God of Wealth.
"Buy one. Got any good recommendations?"
"I've already picked one out."
"Oh? What is it?"
"Mystic Heaven Wings [B]."
"You're insane."
How she even knew about that, he had no idea. A B-grade mount. It was the same grade as Uranos [B], which Yujin himself had only barely obtained past the 80th Floor in his first timeline—an upper-tier entity that made the ordinary horse he currently rode look like a joke. Buying something like that with Coins would take far more than a hundred or two. A thousand at minimum, and then some.
"Do you even know how to get it?"
"I received a quest."
"What?"
Crazy. A quest that granted a B-grade mount? And she was only on the 20th Floor?
"W-what is it?"
He was so shocked he stammered.
"Kill a hidden boss monster. It said something called the Blackened Archangel."
Even Yujin had never heard the name. He didn't know everything about the Tower, after all.
"Blackened Archangel, huh…"
Still, hearing it scratched at something in the back of his mind.
Doesn't that sound similar to Black Wing [B]?
That sword sealed the power of a fallen angel. Blackened Archangel. Fallen angel. The resemblance was hard to ignore.
I should look into this.
Mystic Heaven Wings [B] wasn't a simple mount. It was, quite literally, black wings capable of soaring through the heavens. If Vivian obtained it, their combat power would skyrocket. The idea that she could receive something like that as a mere quest reward was not something he could brush off.
"Nice. Let's figure it out together sometime."
"Okay."
Vivian nodded.
"But you should still grab something practical for now. You and the other two as well. Riding anything is a hell of a lot faster and more comfortable than running like this."
"Got it."
Fortunately, she understood him. It would have been awkward if she had refused.
The two of them cut across the dreamlike forest. Hours passed.
"It really is far."
At last they arrived before the sheer, knife-cut face of the cliff. No one was there. Kang Mu-hyun must have already headed out for the time being. Yujin tilted his head back and looked up at the staggering height of the wall.
"It's a mirror."
Vivian said.
"Yeah. Pretty much a mirror."
Calling it mirror-smooth wasn't a figure of speech. It was clear enough to reflect objects. Vivian absently raised a hand; her reflection on the cliff face did the same. After playing with it for a while, she turned back to Yujin.
"So? Where's the opportunity?"
"Inside the cliff."
"Do we break through?"
"No, not that."
Break through… She was starting to sound more like Lee Sia by the day.
"You sit and meditate while staring quietly at the cliff. You know, wall-facing cultivation?"
"No."
Hm. Guess she'd never read a murim novel.
"Anyway, just think of it as staring at a wall and zoning out."
It was a little more elevated than that, of course. Not simple meditation, but self-reflection, contemplation of the self, probing principle and truth until enlightenment came.
"You're good at something, right? Spacing out. Just do that while looking at the cliff."
Yujin left out a great deal in his explanation.
"If you keep at it, at some point you'll obtain something."
A skill, a trait—or something else entirely.
"Okay."
Vivian didn't doubt him for a second. She nodded and sat down on the spot.
She's comfortable like that.
Lee Sia would have grilled him with endless questions until he got annoyed. Vivian took even half-baked explanations and understood them perfectly. She was different from the more passive Park Ji-hoo as well.
Yujin scratched his head as he watched her sink into thought in front of the cliff almost at once.
"Wonder what she'll get."
Hopefully something good. With that thought, he walked a short distance away and sat down himself.
"Alright. What comes out this time?"
In his first timeline he had obtained the skill Thunder Severing Slash [C] here—the first C-grade he ever held. After the regression the Akasha System had been so generous that C-grades were overflowing, but…
Getting another one of that caliber is still a win.
The cliff gave a player what they needed most. The process was never easy. Long, grinding, fierce hours had to be spent. Only after enduring every hardship did the cliff hand over what was required. First-timeline Yujin had needed a slash powerful enough to cut even lightning, and that was what he received.
"Hoo—."
He took a quiet breath and gazed at his reflection on the cliff face. The wall before him was no mere mysterious natural wonder. It was the boundary between the world and the self, a mirror that reflected the inner depths even the beholder did not know.
Yujin said nothing. He did not move. He simply looked into himself before it. Even the ceaseless flow of time seemed to soak into that stillness.
Stare long enough at a wall that transparently reflected everything, and what you finally faced was not a mirror but yourself. The countless masks forced over the surface, the wounds covering the body—all of them peeled away. What remained was the raw self, nothing more.
The crouching, the fear, the craving. The pride inflated like a balloon crossed with endless anxiety and shook Yujin's heart. Yet he never turned away. He only kept looking, and looking again.
In the end the mirror never asked a question, and Yujin never answered. In the long silence that followed, he simply understood on his own. The essence buried in the deepest place even he had never recognized. That small realization guided him one step beyond the mirror.
Hwaaaaaaaaaaa—!
How much time had passed? It felt like barely ten minutes, but Yujin knew better. It had been the same in the first timeline. He thought he had only drifted into brief contemplation, only to find three full hours gone. It would be the same now.
Thinking that, he released the breath he had been holding.
"Hoooooo—."
At the same moment, a notification rang out.
Hidden Event, Inner Realization, has been completed.
The Wall of All Creation bestows a reward.
Event Completion Reward: Trait 『Ender [A]』 has been granted.
Ender. One who declares the end upon oneself.
"You've got to be kidding me."
He had received an A-grade trait.
Vivian simply looked ahead the way she always did. The only difference was that what lay before her was not empty air, but a cliff as clear as a mirror.
Honestly, wall-facing, meditation—she didn't really understand any of that. But emptying her head and spacing out? That, she was good at.
Snow-white skin. Snow-white hair. The appearance she had so thoroughly hated filled her vision.
Whitey.
The ridiculous nickname Seong Yujin sometimes used. Vivian hated it. She had heard similar teasing now and then ever since she was little. She never showed it, but there had been moments when she wanted to smack him across the mouth.
Why do I look like this?
Albinism. Melanin this, tyrosinase that, mutation the other. She had heard the explanations countless times, but that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was that she was different from everyone else. That because of it she had been shut out and isolated.
Fortunately her parents had been good people and she had never been bullied… but that didn't erase or even dull the wound carved into her heart. Even gazes that looked at her with simple curiosity cut like blades. So she had kept her distance on her own. From every person. From every stranger. From every member of her family. And so she had become alone.
But…
People who approached her as if it were nothing had appeared. First the rude Seong Yujin. Then the overwhelming Lee Sia. And finally Park Ji-hoo, who called her Vivian-nuna. The three of them felt no hesitation at all. At times they were so rude they seemed to lack common sense, and yet that was what she liked most. It made her feel like an ordinary person. That was why she had kept traveling with them—even though she could have left at any time.
What do I want?
Honestly, whether the world ended or not had never interested her in the slightest. She had thought that way until only recently. But now it was a little different.
I want it to always be this fun.
She wanted to keep experiencing more enjoyable things with those three idiots, without anyone dying. Like any of the countless ordinary people in the world.
Vivian truly thought so. And the vast cliff that bore the name of All Creation listened to her wish.
Hidden Event, Inner Realization, has been completed.
The Wall of All Creation bestows a reward.
Event Completion Reward: Trait 『Causality Reversal [B]』 has been granted.
『Causality Reversal [B]』?
Vivian's eyes sparkled.