The Second Sky Island

After slaughtering every monster on the Sky Island and taking down the boss, my status window had become absurdly powerful. From skills to stats, nothing was even remotely comparable to before.

Same as last time, I checked everything from the bottom up.

Stats first.

They'd been sitting around ten before. Now they were several times higher. Agility in particular had ballooned — probably thanks to all those horned snakes I'd been eating. It had hit triple digits. That explained the razor-sharp senses I'd felt ever since fighting the wolves. My dynamic vision and reaction speed had long since left human limits in the dust.

And yet I wasn't tired at all. Every sense in my body was honed sharper than ever, but there was no special cost attached. Nice. That was a relief.

You know how it goes in comics and anime — the guy with special eyes who overloads his brain with too much information the second he opens them? At least that particular setting hadn't applied to me. Small mercies.

"Can't really tell with Endurance yet, but the Strength increase? Yeah, I can ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠feel that for sure. Power's just pouring out of me."

I used to put up 650 kg across the big three lifts. Now I was confident I could handle several times that. I hadn't actually tested it, but the feeling said I could bench six hundred kilos alone.

Hmm. Getting stronger was great, but it was also a little bittersweet. Hitting 650 kg on the big three was genuinely hard. Knowing that kind of record didn't mean anything anymore left me a little sad.

Anyway. That didn't matter.

Next up: the new skills.

"Super Acceleration. Hellfire. Extreme Poison. Sky Walk. These are all evolutions of skills I already had. Looking at the descriptions, it just seems like the raw power got stronger."

Those four didn't need much scrutiny. The output had gone up, but the abilities themselves were the same.

Protruding Horn, though — that was different. I'd gotten it by devouring the horned wolf, and it was a completely new skill. I tapped the detailed description in the status window.

The ability was surprisingly simple. Freely generate horns from anywhere on my body. I thought for a moment about how to use it.

"Hmm… if I can make any shape I want, does that mean weapon shapes work too?"

I pictured an axe-shaped horn growing from my palm. And just like that, a black horn shaped like an axe was sitting in my hand.

"Oh. This is good."

I tested the hardness by swinging it into a nearby tree. With my Strength stat this absurdly high, even a light tap shattered the trunk and sent it toppling over. Using it made things clear — these horns had more than enough durability to serve as weapons.

Calling it "summoning horns at will" undersold it. This was effectively a skill that let me create any weapon I wanted, whenever I wanted. Personally, I loved Protruding Horn to pieces.

"A skill that lets me summon weapons whenever I feel like it… this is pure fantasy! This ability is incredible!"

Being able to make weapons on demand meant I never had to carry gear again. No more bare-handed fighting. I could forge whatever I needed on the spot.

And that wasn't all. With Protruding Horn, I could even live out every man's oldest fantasy.

"Haha. Let's try something a little childish."

I used Protruding Horn to forge a greatsword far taller than I was. The horns came out black, so the massive blade had a killer color scheme — and that alone was enough to set a man's heart pounding. A giant greatsword! That was the dream, right there!

"Ooooh…! This thing's too enormous to even call a greatsword…! Let's see what the Dragonslayer can do."

I brought the greatsword down on the ground with everything I had.

BOOM—

An impact that felt like it shook the entire Sky Island, followed by a roar that nearly split my eardrums. The power was real. The ground where I'd struck had caved in, spiderwebbed with cracks.

"Yeah… but it's not exactly practical."

I liked the greatsword shape, and the destructive force was solid, but actually using it in a fight was a stretch. Think rationally. This was the kind of technique that only worked in comics — not reality.

No choice, then. Weapons should be axes or swords. I'd save the oversized greatsword for when I was goofing around alone.

Okay. Protruding Horn confirmed.

Now for the new A-class skills. Considering Predator was A-class, it was only natural to have high expectations for Slayer and Challenger at the same rank.

Slayer first. The system said I'd earned it by completing a special achievement — probably for killing every living thing on the Sky Island. It came with three sub-skills. I read the detailed descriptions and sorted them out.

Great Explosion was a large-scale area attack, plain and simple. Fear Inducement was a bully-the-weak skill — perfect for farming inferior enemies. Soul Absorption was like Skill Predation or Stat Predation, turning a kill's power into my own… but this one was a little ambiguous.

I already used Predator to devour what I killed. How the mechanics of Soul Absorption and Predator would interact, I had no idea.

"Ideally both would work."

Absorb the soul, then devour ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the skills and stats on top of that? Peak efficiency. I didn't know exactly what "expanding your vessel" meant, but I was taking it as a positive for now.

"By the way, Great Explosion… just how strong is this thing? Feels like it could be insanely powerful."

The status window emphasizing "tremendous destructive power" was almost unsettling. My guess? Nuclear-weapon level.

"Not modern nukes, though. Hiroshima-class, maybe?"

A Hiroshima-class nuclear weapon's effective damage radius was about twenty square kilometers — roughly the size of one of Seoul's districts. Which meant, under normal circumstances, this was a skill I should never, ever use. One wrong move and a mass of completely unrelated civilians could die.

"Well. That's just my guess. For all I know, it could be weaker than expected once I actually fire it."

But I wasn't about to gamble with people's lives. I already had plenty of excellent skills besides Great Explosion. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠So for the time being, that one was sealed.

Next skill to check: Challenger. Same as before, I read through the sub-skill descriptions. Roughly summarized:

If Slayer excelled against multiple enemies, Challenger was the opposite — a skill specialized for single combat. Even mid-fight against a crowd, Challenger could force a one-on-one. And with Weakness Detection as a bonus, I could potentially beat opponents stronger than me.

"Depending on how I use it, I could flip a bad situation completely on its head. Not bad at all."

As expected of A-class skills on the same tier as Predator. Both Slayer and Challenger were thoroughly satisfying.

"Not much to look at in the profile. Just a level-up and more coins."

The coin haul did matter, though. With 3,091 coins I could pick up something useful from the System Shop. But I wasn't spending them right now. Nothing I urgently needed — and more importantly, there was something bigger to focus on.

My one and only S-class skill: Master of the Sky Island.

This skill had grown after I killed the boss monster, the Giant Horned Wolf, and it deserved my full attention. I tapped Master of the Sky Island and opened the detailed description. New text had appeared.

The system was telling me the second Sky Island had opened. I activated Sky Walk and rose high into the air. Evolved to B-class, its performance had improved dramatically — I could fly freely wherever I wanted.

"Nice. With this, I can leave the Sky Island and head down to the ground whenever I feel like it."

That was a thought for later. Right now, the newly opened second Sky Island took priority.

Flying over the islands, I spotted the new one off to the side immediately. It sat maybe ten meters from the first — close enough to practically touch. But the Sky Islands didn't move at all, so they'd never actually collide.

I passed over the first Sky Island, now nothing but ash and cinders, and arrived at the second.

The island itself was about the size of Yeouido — roughly the same scale as the first. The ecosystem, though, was completely different. Where the first had been a forest (or what used to be one), the second was a vast, flat grassland stretching out in every direction.

The Sky Islands sat at an altitude of eight hundred meters, so the wind was always strong — but this place was on another level entirely. With no trees to break the gusts, the wind howled across the open plain. Good thing my physical abilities were off the charts; an ordinary person would've been knocked flat on the spot.

"Hmm… is there only one kind of monster on this island?"

Nothing but grass on a flat plain — the whole island was visible at a glance. That meant I could see every monster on it in one look. All of them were heavily muscled oxen flexing absurd amounts of muscle, and no matter how hard I searched, nothing that looked like a boss monster was in sight.

"No way. There's no chance there's no boss."

On open grassland with almost zero cover, if I couldn't see it, the answer was obvious. I flew higher and looked down over the entire Sky Island.

Sure enough — right in the center of the second Sky Island was a massive circular hole. The boss monster of this place was almost certainly down in that underground cave.