A Place Full of Stars 4
The high alpine ranges made it instantly clear why people compared mountain chains to blades. Stars filled every corner of them — stars soaring freely across the vast sky, and stars trudging diligently along the narrow mountain trails below. Pure numbers favored the ones walking the ground by a crushing margin, but the ones flying overhead were freer than anything else alive.
Which is to say, these bastards simply refused to come into range.
"These things… it doesn't look like each flock lives separately. They're sharing information, aren't they?"
"They never planned to rush us from the start. Is it because they saw the bow and the staff, or do they just instinctively know we're strong?"
A hundred hearings weren't worth a single look. No matter how much Rebecca complained, it was nothing compared to seeing the forty-first floor for ourselves. With that thought, we stepped through the gate on the fortieth floor without hesitation and headed straight up. Crossing the contaminated marshlands still reeling from a baptism of Holy Power, we entered a desolate, chilly high mountain zone.
In place of air thick with poison and the stench of corpses came something cool and clean — though so thin that even a deep breath left the chest feeling tight. And that tightness only grew worse thanks to the harpies circling overhead like they were sizing us up.
They seemed far more intelligent than expected. They had already figured out where the gate was and that adventurers came spilling out of it, because the moment we arrived on the forty-first floor, a whole flock was already wheeling above our heads.
"Whoa, did they set up a patrol? This isn't StarCraft — they parked worker units on recon the second we spawn. And looking at how they're all pitch-black, the pretty star-rated harpies are probably hiding somewhere else. They only sent the throwaway old-hag harpies out to scout."
…These bastards were running a recon unit.
The old-hag harpies had no ★ attached, so they were being treated as pure consumables — and through that, you could glimpse the vicious design philosophy of BB Games. If we tried to pick off the scouts with long-range attacks here, the beauty harpies would get a rough read on our party's range and firepower.
Rebecca's testimony alone had made that clear. A few swings of her blade and they abandoned even rock-throwing; the moment a mercenary mage answered with magic, they wouldn't go anywhere near anyone holding a staff.
Heroes Chronicle ran on a system borrowed from Heroines Chronicle. Archers were single-target ranged attackers — lower damage than magic, but superior fire rate and range. Mages were area-of-effect ranged attackers — higher damage than arrows, but weaker fire rate and reach.
Of course skills could change that, but the average baseline held. Archers could still rain down arrow storms for AoE, and certain spells could snipe single targets from extreme range.
And those harpies understood that distinction perfectly.
"Whoa — the second I put my hand on my quiver, they climb altitude?"
"Their reaction when I'm holding my staff is totally different from when Grace unnie draws an arrow."
Our party was watching the whole thing in real time.
While Han Se-ah held her staff, they circled at a height where they looked about fist-sized. The moment Grace reached for an alchemical arrowhead at her hip, they shot upward until they were nothing but dots… those things. Those women.
They knew a long staff could spit magic instantly, and they'd been trained that a bow needed an arrow nocked before it could fire. Apparently the beauty harpies didn't just domesticate livestock — they could give the old-hag harpies a rough education too.
Every new piece of information only made the situation more hopeless and more irritating.
"For now, let's head for a safe zone on the forty-first floor. They don't seem interested in jumping us right this second. Grace, can you scout a path?"
"I can. I've never been on a rock mountain like this, but… shall we aim for that peak over there?"
Even the trails of a high mountain range weren't simple single-file paths. They climbed, dropped, and wound around the ridges in three-dimensional forks. Grace guided us down one of them.
It was her first time in this space, yet a pathfinder archer's uncanny instinct found the way as naturally as breathing. The way a mage handled mana, archers and thieves found roads the way pigeons find home.
"The safe zone's closer than I expected."
"I heard the alpine safe zones are smaller than the lower floors, but there are more of them. Yeah… this one's definitely tight."
"At this size, the brothers are going to have a hard time setting up camp…."
After crossing two peaks, we reached the safe zone.
Stepping into a cave tucked discreetly among the rocks around mid-slope, cool, crisp air welcomed us. The flock of old-hag harpies circling overhead had clearly been getting on everyone's nerves, because the whole party let out long breaths the instant we crossed the threshold.
Compared to the lower floors — where you could pitch cabins, build research compounds, and still have room for wooden fences — this cave was absurdly cramped. Two tents would fill it past capacity; sleeping bags were about all that would fit.
Still, it was safe. No harpies wheeling overhead, no bizarre bleating of mountain-goat hooves. Everyone picked a flat spot and settled down with relief.
"Ugh. Swamps, and now mountain climbing. We barely even fought and I'm already wiped."
"I know. A rock mountain this brutal… it almost feels like one of the pilgrimage roads from scripture."
Irene nodded along in agreement with Han Se-ah's muttered commentary — loud enough for both the party and the viewers to hear. Even so, thanks to her 5★ stats, she kept pace with what was basically a mountain march without a single complaint, combat class or not.
But wait — with trails this narrow, how were they supposed to move supplies?
The paths were already cramped. If the newly intelligent harpies started interfering strategically and tactically, how were you supposed to keep a supply line open?
You couldn't.
"Fucking hell."
"Lady Rebecca, please try to calm down a little…."
"Hey. Do I look like I'm in a position to calm down? This isn't some booze-and-smokes bust — the food wagons got cut off and we had to run for it."
So everyone had come back down.
…I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
We had only gone as far as the first safe zone on the forty-first floor. When no fight looked imminent, we stepped back out of the Tower — and found the guild in an uproar. The story was that adventurers who had pushed all the way to the forty-fifth floor had been driven back down to the forty-first because of the smarter harpies.
Supply units had been packing enchanted wagons past their physical capacity and reinforcing the narrow trails with Earth Control as they moved. The beauty harpies took one look at that and chose a very simple solution.
While shadow leopards and old-hag harpies drew attention, one-horned mountain goats leapt from the cliff tops and vanished over the edge along with the wagons. Had they planned it knowing that, unlike the named monsters themselves, the one-horned goats respawned infinitely inside the Tower?
"Up top the harpies go after the adventurers, and down below the shadow leopards go for the wagon wheels. We figured they were trying to plunder the supplies — then the one-horned goats just jump straight down onto the wagons from the cliff."
"So what happened?"
"The wagons got wrecked, obviously. Those things weigh fifty kilos easy with that bulk. They drop them like boulders onto the carts — what do you expect? Either the cargo gets smashed or the whole wagon gets dragged over the cliff. Absolute chaos."
They might be called mountain goats, but they were full-fledged monsters. Even the horned rabbits and horned foxes from the single-digit floors could skewer a person to death. There was no way a monster from the forty-first floor would be light or fragile.
Even a charge along a trail and up a cliff face required an Upper-grade adventurer with a shield to stop it at full power. When the same creature used gravity itself for a suicide dive from a cliff top, blocking it cleanly was nearly impossible — especially when they obsessively targeted the wagons instead of people.
Thanks to all that, the guild was packed with Highest-grade adventurers I hadn't seen in so long their faces were half-forgotten. Most wore bitter smiles while they brainstormed countermeasures, but a few were even more worked up than Rebecca. Sitting quietly with the party and listening to the neighboring tables was pure pandemonium.
Naturally, the ones on the verge of a full meltdown were all mages.
"M-my research materials…!"
"What's Antenor going on about?"
"He set up a lab on the forty-fifth floor and moved all his research there. When the supply wagons got cut, he came down with nothing but a few sheets of paper. Anything that needed mana to stay fresh is probably completely ruined."
And the loudest of them all was old man Antenor — the same one who had once fried orcs with lightning. I'd thought he had no interest in the thirtieth or fortieth floors, yet at some point he'd gone and built himself a laboratory on the forty-fifth.
The cave safe zones might be too cramped for people to live in, but they were plenty big enough for a makeshift lab. He'd probably been writing papers on the alpine zone and gotten thoroughly screwed. The difference before and after the beauty harpies appeared was so extreme he might have to scrap every paper he'd written so far.
I was watching Antenor's hot tears — living vicariously through his assistant's despair as the mages at the next table whispered — when someone strode in and rapped firmly on our table.
"A guild statement, a Temple declaration, and a royal decree have arrived."
It was Elise, with dark circles under her eyes so deep they looked dead.
With the Temple and the royal family involved, she clearly hadn't been able to dump the work on her juniors.