The Heart of the Forest
The Heart of the Forest…
Kang Si-a closed her eyes for a moment.
The conversation she had shared with Hyun Si-woon before setting out rose vividly in her mind.
“Stage five is just a bunch of vague nonsense. Shoot the Heart of the Forest? I tried everything for over a week—every ridiculous stunt I could think of. Still couldn’t find the answer. You’ll probably have a hard time figuring it out in an hour. If it feels impossible after a quick look, just quit. You’ll still get plenty of respect for clearing stage four.”
Hyun Si-woon had even set fire to the forest inside the Tower of Despair, and once he progressed the story far enough, he ransacked the queen’s palace looking for hints.
He tried every bizarre method imaginable. All of them failed.
Hmm.
Kang Si-a adjusted her grip on the bow once more.
Ten minutes had already passed since she began.
The forest’s recognition?
Recognition, my ass.
There was no target in sight, and she had no idea what to do.
The elves watched her with expressions that said they had expected as much.
Honestly, her heart felt light.
Oppa told me I could give up, after all.
If even the great Hyun Si-woon said to quit, this might truly be a realm beyond human reach.
Even if she failed, no one would blame her.
With the pressure gone, she almost felt free.
Honestly, just receiving a unique-grade bow would already be more than enough.
But…
Somehow, she felt a lingering regret.
Hyun Si-woon’s face flickered through her mind.
The man who always saw through everything had said this was the one domain he simply did not understand.
The faint irritation and disappointment that had crossed his expression.
For some strange reason, it kept snagging on her heart.
If I could do what Oppa couldn’t…
Maybe, just a little, she could surprise him?
Instead of always being the one protected and led, could she become a reliable comrade who solved the homework he could not finish?
The moment that thought took hold, something hot bloomed in her chest.
It was not simple competitive spirit.
It was a pure desire to do something for him.
I’ll give it everything I’ve got until the end.
Kang Si-a made her decision.
Failure was fine.
But she did not want to quit without even trying.
She stopped thinking.
Instead, she closed her eyes once more and opened every nerve.
The martial formulas Hyun Si-woon had taught her.
You do not look. You feel.
She began expanding her consciousness across the entire forest.
The flow of the cold wind.
The rustle of leaves brushing together.
The pulse of life throbbing deep underground, and even the faint waves of emotion from the hundreds of elves surrounding her.
Everything flowed into her senses.
Eagle Claw Divine Archery.
The moment she circulated the martial art, a strange change occurred.
The energy gathered in her dantian activated and began resonating with her soul.
That resonance spread throughout the entire forest.
Like ripples from a pebble cast into a still lake.
Huh?
Right then.
Something her energy sense had never caught before registered.
What is that?
What her senses captured was a single vast current.
A circulation of life that embraced the whole forest—something she had never felt until now.
From roots to trunk, trunk to branches, and from the tips of the leaves scattering once more into the air: a pure, crystalline river of energy.
It pulsed with a steady rhythm, as if some colossal living creature were breathing.
A breath…
Kang Si-a’s eyes flew open.
If I follow this vein, won’t the heart appear?
If there was a flow, then of course there was a source.
Shhhh…!
Kang Si-a gently drew up the energy within her dantian.
Mind’s Eye Observing the Flow…
See the current with the eye of the heart.
Reciting the formulas of Eagle Claw Divine Archery, she began expanding her consciousness in earnest.
Foot Wind Seeking Breath…
The eagle claw was the hawk.
The hawk sought the breath of the wind with its talons.
Kang Si-a refined her senses even finer.
The energy transmitted through the soles of her feet kept telling her the same truth.
The entire forest was breathing like one enormous living being.
Heart, where are you?
All that remained was to find where that first breath began.
One Strike Severing the Source…
The hawk cut its prey’s lifeline in a single strike.
The moment she recited that formula, a single center of gravity slowly revealed itself.
The elves could not see it.
Only Kang Si-a could.
Ah.
Kang Si-a realized why Hyun Si-woon had never found this hidden path.
Game characters could not handle qi.
To them, dantian, meridians, and the flow of energy simply did not exist as concepts.
And why is that…
It was similar.
The process she was walking right now… resembled the foundational formulas of Eagle Claw Divine Archery to an uncanny degree.
Is it just my imagination that this trial seems designed to test the realm of Eagle Claw Divine Archery?
Swoosh.
Kang Si-a raised her bow.
She had already found it.
The place where all the forest’s life force began and ended.
At the tip of the highest branch of the giant tree-city Sylvanus hung the tiniest leaf.
That was the Heart of the Forest.
To the other elves it would look like just one more leaf among countless others, but in Kang Si-a’s eyes—which could see the flow of qi—the radiant green waves of light pouring from that spot were crystal clear.
“Oh?”
“She’s raising the arrow?”
“She can actually see it?”
The elves began to stir.
Expectation that a legend they had thought impossible might be reenacted before their eyes mixed with disbelief.
“Shh!”
Elanus pressed a finger to his lips.
He too wore a serious expression, concentrating fully.
If this moment truly became a page of history, then silence was the proper etiquette.
Were they not all about to become witnesses to history?
As if sensing that will, the elves hastily closed their mouths.
This was no longer merely an outsider’s trial.
It might be a sacred rite welcoming the forest’s master, returned after thousands of years.
In that stillness, Kang Si-a slowly nocked her final arrow.
Her pupils had grown far deeper and clearer than before.
Creeeak…
She drew the bowstring to its limit.
Her entire body tautened like one enormous bow.
Every scrap of energy gathered in her dantian condensed into a single point at the arrow’s tip.
She did not aim.
She only felt.
And then.
Twang!
The arrow left the string.
It flew a considerable distance—more than a hundred meters—soaring toward the highest point of the giant tree-city.
And at last.
Paaaaaaaah—!
The moment the arrow pierced the tiniest leaf, a brilliant green radiance exploded, so bright it was impossible to keep one’s eyes open.
“Wh-what?”
“Whaaaaat?”
The elves’ eyes went round as saucers.
“G-good heavens.”
“The forest is shining?”
“…The legend of Eldona Forest!”
Thousands of trees resonated as one and began to sing.
The trees grew denser; flowers bloomed.
“Ahh…”
“Ahhhhh.”
The elves dropped to their knees.
They were witnessing with their own eyes the miracle of the first queen, Bilsana.
You pierce the Heart of the Forest.
Congratulations.
You awaken the Soul of Chu Pung that slumbered within Bilsana’s Bow.
“Haa.”
Kang Si-a let out a ragged breath.
All the strength drained from her body; she nearly collapsed to the ground without realizing it.
She had poured every scrap of qi in her body into a single shot.
Yet instead of exhaustion, her face was filled with a fullness and joy she had never known.
I did it.
She had accomplished what Hyun Si-woon could not.
Just imagining how surprised he would be made her feel even better.
At that same moment.
Slash!
Hyun Si-woon was carving through a pack of demons as he raced along a dark forest path.
—Kieeeek!
He did not even spare a glance at the corpses of the demons that collapsed with their death cries.
The clear conditions for the 7th floor are two.
The first was to slay the demon legion commander Malakar.
That was the official route known to the vast majority of players in the past.
The second was to destroy the very source from which the demons appeared.
It was a hidden route known only to Hyun Si-woon, and he was walking that path right now.
Honestly…
Hyun Si-woon recalled the past with a bitter smile.
He had discovered this route in an absurd way as well.
By chance… or rather, something closer to malice?
No.
To be honest, it had been closer to a bug.
Stuck after the 20th floor, Hyun Si-woon had replayed the game and scoured every floor with obsessive thoroughness. In that process, he had found a black gate near Malakar’s spawn zone.
It was obviously a gate from which demons were pouring out.
But?
It was originally an area the game would not let you enter.
No matter how hard he tried to advance, he could not move forward, and even the message [This is an impassable zone.] appeared.
Yet from long experience, Hyun Si-woon knew.
There is no purposeless structure in the Tower of Despair.
Showing him that black gate meant it could serve as a hint toward a hidden path!
After searching for roughly a day, his extraordinary senses picked up a section where the graphics looked faintly broken.
As if textures were overlapping, or polygons were twisted.
An ordinary user would have dismissed it as a minor graphics glitch and moved on, but Hyun Si-woon was different.
Well now, what’s this?
No matter how thoroughly he searched, this was the only place showing an anomaly.
So he rubbed his character against that spot, jumped, and spammed every skill he had.
The so-called “wall-clip bug.”
He attempted it hundreds of times.
Then, purely by chance, he discovered that when he dashed from a specific angle, his character would get sucked into the wall.
It was truly perverted… both me and the Tower of Despair.
Hyun Si-woon still could not forget the thrill of that moment.
“Hmm.”
Puhak!
Cutting down another lower-rank demon that charged him, Hyun Si-woon scanned the surroundings.
It should be around here.
Near the main camp of Malakar’s legion.
As he walked through that area, Hyun Si-woon’s eyes lit up.
Huh?
He felt it.
Not a steady flow of mana, but a tiny warp—a crack in the mana.
Ohh!
Yes.
The direction of the bug!
That way was certain!
Taat!
Hyun Si-woon unfolded Moon Spirit Steps and closed the distance.
Toward the spot where the graphics had once looked broken.
—Hoh.
Ha-wol, who had been watching silently, widened her eyes.
—What a curious brat. How did you even notice this? From the look of it, a high-ranking demon deliberately hid it with an illusion… Even if a Ranker passed through this zone, they would almost certainly have walked right by. The craftsmanship is quite skilled.
Is that so?
Just as expected.
In the game, that magic had been imperfectly implemented and merely looked like a graphics error.
In reality, it was a hidden door sealed by powerful magic.
Just by looking, he could already sense which direction he needed to dash.
“From here on, the difficulty will spike. Back then I probably tried hundreds of times just to reach the source.”
—Tsk. So you’ll regress countless times again this round as well.
“You never know.”
Hyun Si-woon’s eyes gleamed sharply.
In the past, a game swordsman character who relied solely on stats and items.
And now, himself—who had mastered Moon Spirit martial arts and commanded the flow of qi.
The two beings were different at the root.
The result will be different. It has to be.
“Let’s give it a try.”
Hyun Si-woon unfolded Moon Spirit Steps.
His body blurred like a phantom and slipped soundlessly into the weakest crack of the illusion.
Just thinking about obtaining that unknown bow made him unable to suppress the expectation boiling up inside him.