Growth Period (6)
Game’s been out over a month and still no official clear of the final boss, so I cheated my stats to the hard cap and gave it a shot.
Lore calls him the last descendant of the Giant race, a half-god named Jeren.
If you follow the story, you figure out this bastard is the only one who can wreck the gods.
With the God-Slaying Star setting in there, I’m guessing future updates will bring god-related content… but with nobody even beating Jeren yet, who knows when lol
You find Jeren in one of the 72 dungeons—the one called the Ancient Evil, the Crimson Land of Original Sin.
Dig deep enough, find the fortress, and he’s sitting on the throne.
You already know what he looks like.
Three heads, dark blue skin packed with muscle. Pupils a faintly glowing white, blood pure white too.
Bottom line: this guy is pure cancer.
Maxed every stat and still got nowhere.
Worst part is the regen. Most attacks and he’s back to full HP in three seconds, absolute bullshit lmao
Basically you can’t chip his health the normal way—looks like a weakness-pattern boss.
From the start: seems like there’s a minimum entry condition for the boss zone.
I went in with every growth stat at 80 and got hard-gated.
Couldn’t even enter the dungeon.
Pretty ridiculous. 80 is the human racial growth cap.
You’re already peak human and 80 still isn’t enough lol
So I just slammed them to 100 and only then did he talk to me lmao
At first he kept yapping that I hadn’t reached it yet, that I wasn’t qualified, and wouldn’t let me in—but I ignored him and forced entry, and it worked.
There’s some other condition, no idea what.
The real joke is even with cheats you can’t push growth stats past 100. Is this even a boss they expect people to kill?
Anyway, my take: you absolutely need the Hidden Lineage trait.
It lets you break the growth stat caps for extra gains, so if you’re clearing without cheats it’s mandatory.
…….
Day four. I had survived long enough to finally close my eyes, but deep sleep was out of the question.
I kept every sense stretched to the breaking point, ready to react the instant I heard a footstep. I deliberately took only a light nap and woke again; mercifully, nothing had happened through the night.
Feeling a little of my strength return, I decided to explore the cave. If nothing dangerous lived here, it would make a solid base.
Eyes adjusted to the dark, I moved carefully deeper inside. After a long walk, just as I thought I had reached the end, an irregular shape resolved out of the blackness.
A corpse. A monster’s corpse.
The stench of rot stabbed my nose, but I ignored it and approached slowly.
Not a monster?
Maybe because it had been dead so long, the body was smaller than I expected—about the size of a bear from my previous life. In the Forbidden Zone, that counted as a dwarf.
Closer still, it was unmistakably a bear, except for the red fur.
Did it starve because it couldn’t get out?
No signs of a death struggle with another monster. Not a single wound; it had simply stopped breathing right here.
Looking at the size, I can understand why it never made it out before starving.
Could a creature this weak even be born in a place like this?
While examining the body I found long, claw-like bones lying on the floor—claws that had come free from the corpse’s feet. Strangely, they showed no decay at all. Ten razor-sharp claws lay there as if brand-new.
I carefully picked one up. It was incredibly hard. I tapped it a few times with a finger, then tried to snap it with force; it didn’t so much as flex. When I pressed the edge against my skin, it sliced me with almost no resistance.
Insanely sharp…
Even the skin that had completely changed after breaking the fourth wall parted like paper. Cutting power this rare was hard to come by—especially outside the Forbidden Zone, where fists solved everything.
Those claws were probably the only reason this bear-monster had survived here at all.
They’d be perfect against monsters.
Used right, they would be far more efficient than bare knuckles. The problem was I couldn’t just grip them and swing; I needed handles. I set that problem aside for later and sat down nearby.
The cave was empty. What I needed now was rest and a plan to get out of the Forbidden Zone.
Things were not looking good. Fleeing the eagle-monsters had cost me all sense of direction; I had no idea where I even was.
I’ll have to pick a direction and start walking.
I decided to use the cave as a base and methodically scout the surroundings. After fighting jaguars, maggots, and dozens of eagles, I felt that with enough caution I could handle them—all thanks to my sixth sense.
I would not rush.
What I did not know then was that I would end up spending a full year in this place.
I had wanted to enter the Forbidden Zone to avenge my comrades, but I never expected the wish to come true so literally.
Dreams come true.
It came true with sickening clarity.
I killed countless monsters of the Forbidden Zone. Jaguars now felt like pets; when eagles dove I simply grabbed their legs and hurled them. Maggots were roller coasters I rode when I got bored.
But things far worse than those monsters still lurked here.
A few months earlier I had believed I had fully adapted. I left the cave I had lived in for months and began walking in a single direction.
That was when I learned how arrogant the thought had been.
Right now I was running at full speed.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Behind me, enormous feet hammered the earth. With every impact a gigantic shadow leapt high into the air.
It looked like a grasshopper, only three times the size of a tiger. Each time it landed, the hard ground cracked open. I had never known the earth here could even crack; nothing I had done before had ever left a mark. Unimaginable power lived in those legs. Calling them grasshoppers felt wrong.
If I could just catch one, nothing tastes better…
I had eaten them a few times already—nutty and delicious. The reason I was still running was that they traveled in packs.
I glanced back. Dozens of identical grasshopper-monsters were bounding after me. Every leap and landing made the ground shudder.
“Huff… hah…”
Five hours of all-out sprinting and I still had found nowhere to hide. My thoughts were a mess. I had run in one direction the entire time, clinging to the hope of an exit. Lately, though, the gut feeling that this path led nowhere had grown stronger.
The ground was turning a deeper and deeper red. The monsters grew more numerous and steadily stronger.
Damn it.
It felt like I was racing straight into a dead end. This might be my final moment in the Forbidden Zone. But stopping was no longer an option, so I kept running.
Then, all at once, a violent surge of sixth sense tore through my entire body—so strong that even I, who could not afford to slow down, faltered for a heartbeat.
I snapped back to the threat of the grasshopper swarm, but the fear proved baseless. When I looked behind me, the monsters that had been chasing so fiercely were scattering in panic, as if they had slammed into an invisible wall.
In a year of fighting every kind of beast, I had never seen a reaction like that. It looked exactly like prey sensing a far greater predator in a world of pure survival and fleeing on pure instinct.
…Lucky, I guess?
Whatever it was, I had avoided the worst-case scenario I had imagined. The strange part was that none of the other powerful monsters I had casually run into on the way here were anywhere in sight.
Is that why my sixth sense is screaming?
I turned my gaze forward again, searching for the reason the warning had never been this intense.
Far ahead, a dark silhouette came into view. Too distant for clear detail. I pushed the sweat-soaked bangs off my forehead to clear my vision. Before leaving the cave I had only roughly cut the front that got in the way; the rest of my hair still hung past my waist.
…A fortress?
It was a building—something that would not look out of place if people had built it.
Someone living here?
That made no sense no matter how I turned it over. This was still deep inside the Forbidden Zone sealed by the Red Barrier. No environment for humans. The only reasonable explanation was that someone had left the structure behind before the land became forbidden.
My sixth sense kept sounding the alarm, yet curiosity stirred all the same. Was this the trace of his kin the king had spoken of? Or one of those unimaginably powerful monsters?
A few more steps forward. The surroundings were unnaturally quiet. The sixth sense kept warning me not to go any farther. With every step the warning grew madly stronger, clearer.
I felt it with absolute certainty.
If I go, I die.
A conviction completely different from any threat I had felt before. Coming to my senses, I crushed the curiosity and decided to turn back.
In that instant, an unfamiliar voice sank into my ears.
The voice cut off after that single line.
I stood blankly, blinking, certain I must have misheard. A hallucination?
Yet from that moment the warning that had been clawing at my sixth sense vanished completely.
Had the voice belonged to the presence my sense had detected? Had it spoken without even showing itself?
Unanswered questions circled my mind. One thing, however, was certain: farther ahead waited a being I could not face at my current level—very likely the powerful existence the warriors had feared so much, the one they had insisted must never be provoked.
At the same time, one thought burned clear in my head.
If I break the fifth wall… could I fight it?