Chapter 217
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 217
Chapter Title: The Inverted Sea
Following the clean hole Jang Tae-seok had punched through, we successfully escaped that ridiculous magic castle.
As soon as we burst outside, we saw chunks of the shattered castle soaring into the sky.
"It even leaves in a ridiculous fashion."
The massive debris from the collapsing castle defied gravity, shooting upward before vanishing as if sucked into somewhere.
And then, boxes appeared one by one.
"This feels almost like getting it for free."
Jeong Oh-hoon looked at me with a slightly apologetic expression.
What was there to feel sorry about over something like this? I just figured we'd hitched a free ride by chance.
I slowly opened the box. What would be inside this time? Like always, cracking one of these open put me in a good mood.
"What the hell is this?"
It was a small mascot-like trinket you could hang from your belt. A ragged little bear doll with half its neck torn off, crusted with dark red stains on the ripped edges, like someone had tried to depict something gruesome.
Just looking at it made your skin crawl. No one would willingly clip something this creepy to their belt.
"Death's Reprieve."
Even if you take a fatal blow that should kill you instantly, it delays your death by a few seconds.
And if, within those deferred seconds, you manage to kill another living being of sufficient caliber to substitute for your death, then your demise is canceled out.
The baseline for "sufficient caliber" is human-level.
In simple terms, succeed in a mutual destruction attempt, and your enemy dies while you live. I stared at the dangling little bear mascot for a moment, then flicked it.
"You little shit."
This was cursed gear. Most cursed items were crude junk that drove users insane outright.
But the real deal—the ones you could genuinely call cursed—were things like this mascot.
A guaranteed mutual kill, minus the condition that you have to die first, was an incredibly tempting option.
It let you challenge and defeat foes stronger than yourself and survive. Even if you died, taking them down with you substituted their death for yours.
"It's not some magical curse, at least."
But that made it even more dangerous.
Your death is postponed. And within that grace period, you have to kill something.
When your life has only three seconds left, taking down the enemy in front of you seems impossible.
Then your eyes drift, and you spot other people nearby. They could be comrades who've fought by your side, trusting you, or innocents you swore to protect.
Or maybe total strangers.
In the heat of impending death, anyone close enough becomes a sacrificial lamb within arm's reach—something to off in place of yourself.
Who could resist that temptation? And what kind of mental state would someone end up in after killing a comrade to survive?
That's how this gear breaks its user.
"But still."
The ability to temporarily stave off death is a tremendous power. That's why well-crafted cursed equipment is so tricky.
It reeks of malice, yet boasts performance you can't just refuse. Without a second thought, I clipped the mascot to my belt.
"Poor thing, wrong owner."
I flicked the mascot on my belt and muttered, then turned to the other hunters.
"Now, let's move out."
No more business in Turkey. There were probably a few more Erosion Cores left, but no time to clear them all.
We had a deadline. We'd tangled with the Dan-gun Descendant leader midway, and even raided a Rank-1 Erosion Core out of nowhere, but our ultimate goal was reaching Israel.
After days of travel, we finally arrived near Mersin, our midpoint destination.
The Mediterranean came into view.
"It's flipped upside down."
More precisely, the sky over the Mediterranean was visible. Where the sea should have been beneath our feet, there was sky instead. Looking up, waves crashed where the sky ought to be.
What kind of insane bullshit was this? I cautiously extended a scrap of cloth toward the sea.
Instead of drooping downward, the cloth shot upward into the sky, fluttering wildly.
The moment it crossed the boundary between land and sea, gravity flipped like it was waiting.
"What do we do now?"
The instant I stepped forward, I'd plummet into the sea. Not that it mattered—Seong Si-hoon could catch us with telekinesis...
"Fuck me."
I stared suspiciously at the sea for a while, then shook my head.
"This is nightmare fuel."
Once you enter the sea, you can't easily escape. That's how they've twisted it.
"Doesn't it just look flipped?"
Jeong Oh-hoon asked. If only it were that simple.
"It's a Klein bottle."
Han Sang-ah let out an "Ah" at my words.
"A hypersurface."
In our world, we can describe it with all our might, but we can never realize it.
"If you don't know how to exit, you could sail for three thousand years on a ship and never leave the sea."
You'd just keep sailing forever. This sea is warped in four-dimensional space. We 3D dwellers can never comprehend or experience it in our lifetime.
"Land route then?"
I shook my head.
"It's a concept that doesn't need to exist on Earth anyway. I'll burn it."
Four-dimensional nonsense belongs in mathematicians' and scientists' heads. No need or reason for it on our planet.
Which means it's fine to torch it. No side effects for the world. If anything, it's correcting an erroneous reality with Paradox Flame.
"We'll burn just around our ship."
And what happens then...? How do I even describe this? Damn it. Hard to put into words.
Han Sang-ah suddenly rummaged through her smartphone and spoke up.
"You're unfolding a tesseract, right?"
"Tesseract?"
She soon showed me a video.
"The four-dimensional hypercube, also called a tesseract. Watching this should help you get it. It's an unfolding animation."
The video Han Sang-ah showed featured some bizarre polyhedron spinning around. It resembled a cube but wasn't quite—something eerie.
It twisted in an unnatural direction and unfolded into eight cubes linked together, forming this "tesseract."
"Ah, yeah, that's it. Something like this."
Still, it couldn't fully convey what we'd experience. Closest approximation, maybe.
We can't properly depict or understand it. That's why it's unknown—not like the deep sea or space, which we might one day reach.
It's a realm our very existence precludes us from ever accessing or comprehending.
"Tesseract to me just means that old classic movie that was famous back in the day."
"..."
For a split second, Han Sang-ah shot Jeong Oh-hoon a look of pity at his words.
He probably meant the one with superheroes teaming up against a polar-fleece-clad golden-gloved alien villain. Come to think of it, we're in a pretty similar spot right now.
"Sail straight while I burn the surroundings with Paradox Flame. Don't worry about anything else—just focus on steering."
Humans instinctively try to make sense of what they see. It's less a tendency and more raw instinct.
And once that kicks in, you'll go mad soon enough. Sounds ridiculous—losing your mind just trying to grasp unknown knowledge—but...
It's like a fish flopping out of water, gasping with its gills.
The fish suffocates trying to breathe air; the human snaps trying to comprehend the incomprehensible with 3D logic.
"Anyway, I've warned you. Let's get moving."
Seong Si-hoon assembled a boat with telekinesis. As he floated it onto the sea, it immediately "fell" upward—toward the sea occupying the sky's place.
Damn, "falling upward" sounds absurd. Shouldn't it be downward? Same for us—we stepped onto the sea and plummeted skyward.
"Now, linking it up."
Paradox Flame spread from my body, enveloping the boat.
After that, we kept our eyes firmly inward, never glancing out, as we pushed south. To block our vision, we stayed inside the boat without stepping out even once.
"But how do we fight like this?"
I answered Jang Tae-seok's question.
"Fight what?"
If monsters pop up, we run like hell—like spotting an overloaded truck barreling from behind.
No fighting here, at least. Maybe once we're out of the sea.
"Chance the whole Erosion Zone is like this...?"
"Then write your will now."
Great Eight Erosion Zone or whatever—if they've shoehorned a 4D concept onto part of the Mediterranean and all of Israel?
If that's possible, it's an entity so colossal we'd need wills before charging in.
Even prime me would need months to fight it, with high odds of losing.
At widest estimate, it'd vanish once we pass Cyprus shores, along with this godforsaken 4D hell.
"Getting there first is the issue."
A bizarre roar echoed. I spoke up immediately.
"Block hearing. No—cut off all senses except vision."
With an extra axis, we 3D folk can't grasp the direction of those shrieks. Good we can keep sight inside the boat.
Shut down everything else, or your brain melts like fatty pork on a hot grill.
All we can do is accelerate south.
The oars on Seong Si-hoon's boat thrashed wildly for more speed. He was even pushing with telekinesis.
Our Paradox Flame-blazed boat streaked forward, trailing a long fiery tail.
Mindless sailing across the vast ocean—blind except southbound.
How long did we charge like that? I felt the Paradox Flame extinguish. It was over.
I picked up a pen and wrote "End" on a paper.
"We escaped?"
I nodded at Lee Se-eun's question. Phase one clear.
"Can we go out now? I wanna bash those roaring bastards."
Everyone nodded at Jang Tae-seok's words. It wasn't long, but navigating south with all but sight blocked was grueling.
We leaped out of the boat right away.
"Some massive... octopus thing?"
Monsters vaguely octopus-like were chasing our boat.
Part anemone, too. Covered in sticky mucus, with ivory-tinted, crystalline spikes jutting out like awls.
Their massive tentacles writhed, sheathed in red muscle fibers. Look at those huge legs—one slice could feed five hundred.
"Slice 'em all up."
Tonight's dinner: fresh-caught octopus, pounded tender.