If You're Ignorant, You're Brave

There are only two ways a quest can end.

One is when the given clear conditions are met.

Whether satisfying just the basic conditions or additional conditions too, meeting the conditions is all that matters.

The other is when it becomes impossible to meet the clear conditions.

The quest fails in situations like dying or the objective disappearing, and depending on whether retry rights exist, you can either retry or return to reality.

Then what about cases that don’t fall into either category?

Though it’s not an easy thing, what happens if a user maintains a situation where they could meet the clear conditions without actually meeting them?

The answer is simple.

The quest continues without ending.

On and on and on.

“It really keeps going? Until the client dies of old age?”

“Well. Since no user has continued a quest that long, I can’t give a definite answer, but probably? There was a user who got caught up in another world’s life and kept stalling quest completion. But even after 20 years, it just ended with their fate change rate dropping and having to pay a lot of karma points to purchase the experience and knowledge gained from that world.”

If that was all after dragging out a quest for 20 years, the penalties could be considered negligible.

Of course, while there might not be direct penalties, that didn’t mean there were no problems.

The first was the issue of time ratio differences between the original world and other worlds.

There’s no problem if Earth’s time flows slower and the other world’s time flows faster.

It’s somewhat fortunate if Earth and the other world’s time flows similarly.

But what if Earth’s time flows faster and the other world’s time flows slower?

Problems could arise like returning from a quest to find acquaintances dead or the world completely changed.

But this was nothing compared to the second problem.

“Want to hear what happened to that user I mentioned earlier?”

“No thanks. I can guess roughly what happened.”

Fun adventures, heart-wrenching romance, ordinary daily life.

Whatever it was, could someone who had been immersed in life in another world for over 20 years properly readjust after returning to Earth?

“They weren’t that stable to begin with, but after that they completely lost it. They spent all day either searching through quest lists saying this wasn’t where they belonged and they’d return to the other world, or drowning in drugs. Unless absolutely necessary, finish quests quickly. I’m saying this sincerely.”

It was the first time seeing Kang Changseok’s serious side.

And Yuseong took Kang Changseok’s warning seriously too.

No matter how strong one’s mental fortitude, he was just a human who had lived barely over 20 years.

If he lived in another world for 10 years or longer than his current lifespan, and as someone else at that, his identity would completely change.

He would no longer be himself.

However, Yuseong didn’t think spending a long time on quests was necessarily only dangerous.

“The problem is when time spent in another world becomes too long, but if you maintain balance well, you could use it like a hyperbolic time chamber…”

When Yuseong learned this quest’s time ratio was significantly favorable, he thought he had found an opportunity.

A chance to learn new skills and gain lacking close combat experience.

After leaving the search to Alice, Yuseong immediately challenged the martial artists near Lake Dongting to duels.

“You want to fight? Am I crazy? Why should I fight when there’s nothing to gain?”

“If you defeat me, I’ll give you one tael of gold.”

“Hmm, one tael of gold. I was running low on drinking money, this works out well.”

The first were wandering warriors.

Aiming to build experience steadily, he used money to tempt third-rate wandering warriors into duels, or rather, fights.

Though he removed most items and fought with equal strength as his opponents, Yuseong won easily.

He won without much difficulty against second-rate and first-rate warriors too.

The problem started with peak masters.

Against peak masters, Yuseong could only barely achieve victory after three hundred exchanges.

“Something seems strange.”

Though he had restricted his strength and skills and been careful not to inflict wounds, Yuseong couldn’t help but be bewildered by the unexpected struggle.

This was because Yuseong fought while predicting his opponents’ movements in real-time using Asura Perception Way to read movements and Eye of Truth to grasp the flow of energy.

No matter the difference in martial arts proficiency and experience, for a fight to drag on this long when he could predict his opponent’s movements was logically impossible.

‘The fight was in my favor throughout. I chose the best options for every moment according to the opponent’s movements and had several chances to end it. So why did it turn out like this?’

“…Well, I have plenty of time anyway. If I keep fighting, I’ll figure out the reason eventually.”

He fought against masters who used various weapons like swords, sabers, spears, staffs, fists, kicks and various martial arts styles like strong, soft, quick, illusory, changing.

[Combat Technique rank has increased to C+]

[Combat Technique rank has increased to B-]

[Acquired Strength Breaking skill(C-)]

[Strength Breaking skill has evolved into Flower Grafting skill(B)]

Ten times, fifty times, a hundred times.

As the number of fights increased, he could gain various experiences and grow stronger while acquiring new skills.

The peak master he had barely defeated after three hundred exchanges could be beaten in two hundred fifty exchanges the second time, then two hundred exchanges, then one hundred exchanges.

But that was the limit.

Yuseong couldn’t grow beyond that.

‘Why can someone weaker than me defeat in fifty exchanges an opponent that took me a hundred exchanges to beat? Is it because of weapons? No, there are fist masters as strong as sword masters. What exactly is the problem?’

An incomprehensible result.

Yuseong fought and fought to resolve his questions.

But Yuseong couldn’t find answers to his questions by the time Alice discovered the hidden chamber.

* * *

The size of Lake Dongting was incomparable to ordinary rivers.

With a bit of exaggeration, one could say it rivaled the sea.

Naturally, it was impossible for a person to search alone through such a vast space, especially underwater where light barely penetrated, to find a hidden chamber that could be anywhere.

It was worse than finding a needle in a desert.

But Alice was both human and not human.

The android made with Sophia’s full effort could operate not just underwater but even in space, and was equipped with infrared vision that could pierce darkness and various detection sensors.

Of course, searching the lake wasn’t impossible.

It just took quite a lot of time.

‘Mr. Yuseong is too heartless.’

Alice pushed out her lips while shooing away the school of fish circling around her.

Though she hadn’t expected fun adventures after hearing about users and quests, she never dreamed she’d end up drifting in dark water for weeks.

Fortunately, thanks to various convenience functions, the long search operation wasn’t too boring.

An android’s body is different from a human’s in many ways.

She could play music in her head, display text or videos on her retina to read books or watch movies.

Then how was the search done?

The artificial intelligence installed in the android handled it automatically.

All Alice had to do was use Eye of Truth to control the dragon heart’s magic power to prevent overheating.

‘I want to quickly find it and go out to talk with Mr. Yuseong, or look around to see what this other world is like.’

But there was still over half the area left to search.

Just as she was about to move elsewhere while sighing, Alice stopped moving.

The readings on her sensors seemed strange.

After closing the video displayed on her retina and activating Eye of Truth, Alice was shocked at what she saw.

‘What in the world is that?’

The sensor values remained the same and the water flow was calm.

But Alice’s eyes saw a scene of dazzling energy swirling so brilliantly it was hard to look at directly.

‘Huh?’

She had definitely headed straight for the vortex, but when she came to her senses she was on the opposite side.

After staring at the vortex briefly, Alice soon smiled as if amused and approached the vortex again.

However, unlike before, Alice wasn’t thrown off in a random direction but gradually got closer to the center of the vortex.

This was because she moved while understanding and conforming to the flow of energy in the vortex.

And the moment she reached the center of the vortex, the world changed.

“Teleport? Hallucination?”

She had definitely been underwater, but suddenly she was transported to the middle of a massive space surrounded by neatly finished walls and ceiling.

Gulp.

It was already unsettling being alone in an unknown place, but now even the connection with the Portable Satellite that Yuseong had set up was cut off.

As Alice looked around trembling faintly, her eyes caught sight of a large passage and six characters carved above it.

Heaven-Communicating Divine Demon’s Tomb.

“Oh? I-I found it!”

She had finally discovered the hidden chamber they had been searching for so long.

Forgetting her anxiety about being in a strange place and rejoicing, Alice unconsciously looked up at the wet sensation she felt on her head.

Drip! Drip! Drip!

A bizarre being about 4 meters tall with a woman’s upper body and spider’s lower body was stuck to the ceiling dripping saliva.

After freezing at the shocking sight, Alice finally managed to utter one word after searching her memories.

“…Arachne?”

Kyaaaah!

Seeing the Arachne shoot green venom from its mouth, Alice reflexively raised both arms to cover her face.

The Arachne, no, the human-faced spider burst into laughter seeing Alice like that.

Daring to try blocking its venom with bare hands?

Now this human would learn what it meant to have flesh and bones melt in agony.

However, the shocking scene that followed made the human-faced spider freeze just as Alice had.

“Ugh. Strange smell.”

Keek?

She had definitely been hit by venom spit from poison glands aged five hundred years.

She should have turned into a bloody mess in the blink of an eye, yet all she said was strange smell?

After blankly staring at Alice, the human-faced spider soon gritted its teeth and began shooting even more concentrated venom.

Sssssst!

“Ah! My hair!”

However, even its desperate venom only managed to slightly damage her hair, and even that was instantly repaired by nanomachines.

Alice’s android body had achieved phenomenal durability by using all sorts of rare materials without restraint and employing numerous cutting-edge technologies to handle the dragon heart’s magic power.

Unless it was a human-faced spider that had lived a thousand years.

The five hundred year old human-faced spider’s venom wasn’t nearly enough to melt an android that cost as much as a decent country’s budget.

Keeeeek!

Realizing its venom wasn’t working, the human-faced spider shot spider web from its rear end.

But Alice wasn’t going to keep taking hits either.

Even if there was no damage, she had no intention of getting hit by not just smelly liquid but spider webs too.

Alice deployed her boosters to fly up into the air, and as she raised her arms, black particles gathered to form a huge rifle.

20mm large caliber railgun.

As they say, if you’re ignorant, you’re brave.

Not knowing what the railgun was, the human-faced spider shot spider web straight at Alice, and Alice fired the railgun at the human-faced spider.

Bang!

Keeeeeek!

Along with a white flash, the human-faced spider’s spider body exploded into pieces.