Chapter 61 - End and Beginning

But the world always has its exceptions, and people who defy common sense. Wasn't that what made it interesting—and worth living in?

THUD, THUD, THUD...

Dong Bongsu was falling. But his descent looked nothing like what Shifting Shadow and the others had imagined. He was certainly heading toward the ground, but not nearly as fast as he would have been under the full acceleration of gravity. The reason had to do with the sounds ringing out at regular intervals in midair.

Once again, he thrust one fist and both feet forcefully downward. At the same instant, a corpse shot out of his other, otherwise idle hand. This was, of course, the work of his Inventory art.

With a dull thud, the corpse was crushed beyond recognition. Naturally, it plummeted faster, while Dong Bongsu's accelerating descent slowed by the impulse imparted to the corpse. He repeated this at fixed intervals. If he waited too long, his body would accelerate until controlling his hands and feet became difficult. If he did it too often, he might exhaust the corpses and objects in his Inventory before reaching the ground. Carefully, he proceeded according to his earlier 'calculations.' Even in midair, his composure remained unbroken.

'Five hundred meters down now. Approximately twelve hundred to fifteen hundred left.'

Just before jumping from the summit, he had roughly estimated Seonjung Mountain's elevation at 1,700 to 2,000 meters above sea level. That calculation was based on the slopes and distances he had experienced while pursuing the survivors.

Mountain paths were hardly straight, making it difficult to judge by feel alone. Still, drawing a straight line between the starting and ending points allowed for a rough estimate. The mixture of steep and gentle slopes left a large margin of error, but planning around the maximum figure of 2,000 would minimize the danger anyway.

In fact, his calculations had begun when Shifting Shadow and Water Shadow attacked him and the pursuit force from behind. The new escape route he had conceived then was to jump from the summit. From that point onward, he had steadily stuffed rocks, stones, and mangled pieces of the dead into his Inventory whenever he could. Of course, to keep anyone from noticing, he had limited himself to things his feet touched.

Had his body been that of an ordinary person, he could never even have attempted this method. It was possible only because his strength, endurance, and reflexes far surpassed those of normal people—and because he possessed the Inventory Divine Art.

Above all, he could be confident this would work because he retained his memories of the modern world. The Pythagorean theorem, Newton's law of gravitation, action and reaction, equations of motion. Basic mathematics? Physics calculations alone had allowed him to jump off the cliff certain he would survive.

'Judging by my experience so far, Newton's laws apply here just as they do back there. Gravitational acceleration varies slightly with altitude, but the difference is tiny. Not worth considering. It's practically constant at about 9.8 m/s². Let's round that to ten. With almost no air resistance, my speed just before hitting the ground would be 720 km/h. That's more than half the speed of sound. Leveling up may have made me much stronger, but there's no way my body could withstand that impact. At most, it can probably handle a fall at fifty to sixty kilometers per hour. If we're talking about surviving despite massive damage... with my current body, I might be able to withstand a hundred kilometers per hour. Perhaps even a slightly stronger impact.'

He ran through his earlier calculations and assumptions again. Even Dong Bongsu had to simplify them as much as possible while doing so many things at once.

'But slowing my descent that much consumes one corpse per second. In free fall without air resistance, I'd reach the bottom in about twenty seconds. Decelerating as calculated, however, would drastically extend that time. Estimated duration: a minimum of one minute, a maximum of roughly two. So the corpses and objects I'll need... since the items in my Inventory aren't all the same weight... at least sixty, up to around a hundred and twenty... possibly more. Then again, accounting for air resistance might reduce that number.'

A hundred and twenty objects with enough inertia to support his weight.

He did not have that many corpses and objects in his Inventory. There were the small stones, scrub trees, and scraps of corpses he had gathered earlier, but those would offer almost no help in pushing him back upward.

'But.'

Dong Bongsu still had another trump card: making use of the slope of the cliff itself.

As he fell, steadily reducing his speed, the spot he had been waiting for finally came into view.

'There it is.'

He kicked a rock taken from his Inventory, propelling himself toward the cliff, and clung to its face. Having already shed nearly all his downward speed, he found this relatively easy. Cracks in the rock gave him places to wedge his hands and feet. Most importantly, the cliff face sloped downward, however slightly.

Slowly, he climbed down the cliff like a rock climber descending a face. Whenever the slope tilted upward again and made footholds difficult to find, he launched himself back into the air and fell. Then, upon spotting another place to set his feet, he took an object from his Inventory and propelled it in the opposite direction, sending himself back toward the cliff...

He repeated the process.

When the face slanted upward, he struck objects and corpses, using the reaction force to slow himself. Whenever he found a section sloping even slightly downward like a slide, he clung to the cliff and climbed down.

That was his strategy, and so far it was working. This way, he could descend while keeping his consumption of corpses and objects to a minimum. It would have been easier if he could retrieve an object immediately after striking it with his hand or foot, but that was beyond him. The instant he struck something, the distance between them increased, making it impossible to return the used object to his Inventory. Had that been possible, he could even have performed Void Walk. But it simply wasn't.

He had become certain this strategy would work when he looked down from Seonjung Mountain's summit. What caught his attention was that the long stretch of basalt columnar joints eventually gave way to a foliated layer of mixed granite and basalt. At a certain point, the sheer, straight cliff changed into a faulted face with horizontal, tiered layers. Given the mountain's height, its various layers had probably formed in different eras. That was why he had been able to jump without much hesitation.

He had never done this before, but he believed he could. And he had done it—was still doing it. He even slid down parts of the cliff. Occasionally, he encountered exceptionally smooth rocks among the columnar joints, some sloping at just the right angle for sliding.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

He used corpses as sliding mats. Friction stripped away their skin, sprayed blood, and ground down bone. But the more they wore away, the farther down he traveled. When he accelerated too much and the corpse was completely ground away, or he felt he could no longer hold on, he kicked off the rock face into open air before returning to the cliff. Naturally, he used the tattered corpse to propel himself back. Once there, he laid down a fresh corpse as a mat and resumed sliding.

It was an extremely dangerous and difficult method, but he carried it out calmly. Little by little, he put more distance between himself and the sky, drawing that much closer to the ground.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT.

Another corpse was ground into rags against the cliff, and his chances of survival rose accordingly.

Then, just as he was nearing the ground—

"Aaaaaagh!"

The scream of someone plummeting down the cliff reached his ears.

'Finally here.'

The instant he heard it, Dong Bongsu was already leaping toward the sound. At some point, the Beginner's Sword had appeared in his hand. As always, it cut through the air with sickening economy.

CHOP.

Perhaps the falling man had thought that some miraculous opportunity might await him at the bottom of the cliff. Without even that small hope, he would never have jumped at all. But what awaited him was Dong Bongsu's cold blade.

His head and body parted in midair, and he resumed his journey toward the ground. Dong Bongsu, meanwhile, summoned a rock, kicked it, and returned to the cliff. Then he murmured,

"Eighty-seven."

Current Quest Progress (Completed/Required): 87 / 100

Only thirteen more people until his class advancement.

RAT-A-TAT-TAT...

Dong Bongsu began descending the cliff again, waiting for his next victim.

A short while earlier, atop Seonjung Mountain.

Shifting Shadow stood at the cliff edge where Dong Bongsu and the pirates had been, gazing down. Naturally, he could see nothing. Only white clouds draped around the mountainside met his eyes.

"Why did you do it...?"

The empty question, addressed to no one, was swept away by an updraft and scattered over Seonjung Mountain's summit. Shifting Shadow slowly turned and surveyed Tang Wu and his rabble, huddled by the opposite cliff. Then his eyes met Tang Wu's.

"A pity, but I'll have to settle for you."