Second Adventure Begins (2)
The two who had crossed over to Earth-001 for the second time once again landed in a place whose location they could not identify.
Around them, the giant trees still towered densely, and everything remained the same… the abundance of mana filling the air and the powerful gravity pressing down heavily.
Just in case, Seon Yul opened Absolute Space and went inside, but as expected, every entrance to Absolute Space that had previously been opened had disappeared.
It seemed that the moment one crossed between the two worlds, all entrances inside Absolute Space were reset.
“Just like we expected, when you pass through the Main Gate, you seem to drop randomly somewhere in this forest.”
Seon Yul muttered while looking around.
“Good thing we installed doors beforehand.”
Naturally, they had anticipated this situation and installed doors in advance, so it wasn’t much of a problem.
‘Just what kind of criteria does Absolute Space use to connect with the world…?’
There was actually something Seon Yul had been curious about, though he hadn’t mentioned it to Cheon Li Yu.
It was the question of whether the Absolute Space opened in Earth-001 and Earth-104 was actually the same.
The origin of this question was the Return Stone.
Originally, if one wanted to move from Earth-001 to Earth-104, a Return Stone was absolutely required.
But what if… Cheon Li Yu stayed inside Absolute Space without using a Return Stone, and only Seon Yul used a Return Stone to cross over and then opened Absolute Space again… would Cheon Li Yu remain inside Absolute Space?
If this were possible, then in reality, Seon Yul could return thousands of people to Earth-104 with just a single Return Stone.
Seon Yul wanted to test this, but since it could actually be an extremely dangerous experiment, he couldn’t recklessly use Cheon Li Yu as the subject.
So he had kept the thought to himself without even mentioning it.
‘If the opportunity comes later, I’ll try to test it somehow.’
The reason he didn’t want to use Cheon Li Yu as the test subject was obvious… she had become someone very precious to him.
If the experiment went wrong, she might fall into some unknown gap between spaces and disappear forever, or she might be ejected and left behind alone on Earth-001.
Because of those dangers, he decided he would wait until an opportunity arose to test it in another way.
“For now… let’s move toward the cliff.”
The reason Seon Yul wanted to move to the cliff was that he planned to ascend straight upward from there and attempt once again the satellite launch that had failed during their first adventure.
For the moment, Seon Yul left Cheon Li Yu inside Absolute Space and stepped back outside.
Then he searched through the photos stored on his magic-stone smartphone until he found the one he wanted.
Through that photo, he confirmed the image of the door he had installed near the elite wyvern nest on top of the cliff, recalled it in his mind, and used Real Painting—The Door.
A door appeared in front of Seon Yul.
He opened it and stepped through.
Creeak, thud!
In an instant, Seon Yul burst out through the steel door installed atop the wyvern cliff, located near the center of the Forest of Darkness.
Since the entire door had been installed lying flat on the ground, the moment Seon Yul came out, he twisted his body to the side and rolled across the ground.
‘Phew, good thing the distance wasn’t too short.’
Originally, the maximum movement distance of Real Painting [The Door] on Earth-104 was about 1,700 km.
But on Earth-001, all awakened abilities were weakened, so the maximum distance of The Door had obviously decreased.
To know the exact limit, he would have to test it fully, but based on his rough feeling, it had probably dropped drastically to around 400 km.
Considering the size of this forest, where mana users from Earth-104 randomly landed, was roughly comparable to the Indian subcontinent, it was possible he could have ended up somewhere beyond the maximum range of The Door.
That was why he felt fortunate that the movement had succeeded.
Creeak, thud!
Seon Yul closed the steel door lying on the ground and immediately opened the entrance to Absolute Space.
“Did you move?”
“Yeah. Luckily, we didn’t land too far away.”
“Are we going up right away?”
“Ah, let’s first check whether there are any elite wyverns again and go up slowly.”
One of the laws of Earth-001 that Seon Yul was curious about:
“How are dead monsters replaced?”
If Earth-001 were simply a realistic world, then monsters would maintain an ecosystem, repeating cycles of life and death within it.
But if some artificial existence had inserted some kind of ‘setting’ that ignored the fundamental laws of the world, then completely different things might occur.
“I’ll take a look.”
At Seon Yul’s words, Cheon Li Yu immediately began examining the world visible beyond the entrance of Absolute Space using her Divine Eye.
Tssssss.
Cheon Li Yu calmly observed the outside.
After concentrating on scanning the surroundings for about ten minutes, she shook her head and deactivated Divine Eye.
“Phew~ Nothing particularly strange. I don’t see any big differences from when we were here before.”
“There weren’t any elite wyverns?”
“I didn’t directly see one, but about 20 km south of here, there was a large nest. It looked almost identical in size and appearance to the elite wyvern nest we killed before.”
‘So it’s not a world with artificial settings added? Then is this world truly a fundamental dimension?’
The system had clearly said that intelligent beings from countless dimensions gathered on Earth-001.
And the number attached to it was 001.
At this point, it was almost blatantly suggesting that Earth-001 was the starting point and essence of all dimensions.
‘We have to find the items that will save our world here and return… but why did the system pull us into this world in the first place?’
Seon Yul never trusted the system from the beginning, so he believed there had to be a definite reason why it had dragged mana users from Earth-104 into this world.
And he believed that only by discovering reason could the truly fundamental problem be solved.
‘It feels like they’ve drawn in powerful individuals from numerous dimensions, not just us… but why? And what exactly is the system?’
Now the system no longer appeared on Earth-104.
No announcements appeared, and there was no interference.
It truly felt as though it had vanished after the final cataclysm.
And naturally, the system was not visible here on Earth-001 either.
Only the “settings” it had left behind remained intact.
Even so, Seon Yul continued trying to discover the system’s true underlying purpose.
Because Seon Yul was someone who constantly strove for his own absolute safety, eliminating the system… the most fundamental potential threat, was an important matter for him.
“What are you thinking so hard about?”
Cheon Li Yu pulled Seon Yul back to reality from his deep thoughts.
“Ah, nothing. Then let’s rest a bit and go straight up. This time we’re really going to launch it!”
Shaking his head to clear away the thoughts that were almost like wild speculation, Seon Yul spoke energetically.
During this second adventure, he absolutely wanted to succeed in launching the satellite.
For that purpose, he had held many discussions with Cha Seong Hyeon.
He had even received from him a list of suitable satellite orbits for reconnaissance satellites, the methods and configuration values for setting up the satellite, and even the ground-side system used to manage it.
Cha Seong Hyeon had also mobilized everything he could to help Seon Yul, so this time the chances of success seemed much higher.
After resting for about 20 minutes, the two immediately began ascending straight toward the sky.
Using Divine Eye [Vision Sharing] and the creation of Absolute Space entrances, Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu began climbing upward like stepping stones through the sky.
After using about 15 kg of magic stones to reach an appropriate altitude, Seon Yul began launching reconnaissance satellites into the various orbits Cha Seong Hyeon had recommended.
Seon Yul placed a total of seven reconnaissance satellites into different orbits.
He had launched all of them, thinking that he would be completely satisfied if even one or two succeeded.
Now he only had two satellites left.
If this attempt completely failed, he planned to prepare even more perfectly and try again with the remaining two.
Since satellites had been registered in the All-Purpose Tool Shop, even though they were expensive, he could purchase more with magic stones and increase the number again.
So even if he used them all, it wouldn’t be a disaster.
After finishing the satellite installation, Seon Yul descended back to the ground.
Then, as Cha Seong Hyeon had instructed, he activated the communication module and calmly waited to see whether it had succeeded.
Cha Seong Hyeon had said they would need to wait one or two days to determine the results accurately.
So Seon Yul also decided to wait for about two days.
***
“It worked! G is operating normally, too.”
Seon Yul had classified the seven satellites he launched as A, B, C, D, E, F, and G.
Right now, he was cheering after confirming that three satellites were functioning normally.
D, E, and G.
Those three had begun operating properly as reconnaissance satellites.
“Wow, this actually worked?”
Cheon Li Yu, watching from the side, muttered with an expression of disbelief.
“But how do we use this? Do we just use it for reconnaissance?”
Cheon Li Yu didn’t even properly know what reconnaissance satellites were used for.
Naturally, it wasn’t a field she had ever been interested in.
“For now, I’m planning to use the satellites to create an overall map of Earth-001. And for specific areas, we can take high-magnification images and keep observing them… the possible applications are endless.”
Launching reconnaissance satellites didn’t immediately create anything extraordinary.
But thanks to them, long-distance reconnaissance had now become possible… even if it wasn’t at the level of the Divine Eye ability.
The unfortunate part was that with only a few reconnaissance satellites, there were still many limitations, so they couldn’t expect results comparable to the level previously enjoyed on Earth-104.
Cha Seong Hyeon had already explained this to Seon Yul.
In fact, since Earth-001 had an entirely different environment from Earth-104, even results obtained from the same orbit tended to differ in quality.
On Earth-104, reconnaissance satellites had a resolution of about 30 cm, which was extremely precise.
But on Earth-001, the resolution was over 3 meters.
Additionally, reconnaissance satellites naturally had relatively short lifespans, so maintaining them continuously would require significant resource expenditure even for Seon Yul.
The price of a reconnaissance satellite currently registered in the All-Purpose Tool Shop was an astonishing 147 kg of magic stones.
Even though Seon Yul possessed a large amount of magic stones, it wasn’t cheap enough to scatter them around freely.
‘Still, now that I’ve confirmed satellites can be launched… the things we can do with this technology are endless.’
Seon Yul hadn’t tried to launch satellites merely for reconnaissance purposes.
In a sense, satellites were the culmination of scientific technology developed on Earth-104, and the only scientific technology that could function on Earth-001.
In a way, this was also a kind of crack play, but in a reality where unlimited rules applied and everything was allowed, worrying about rules while fighting would be the more foolish thing to do.
“The satellites will do their work on their own… so let’s do ours.”
“We’re hunting the elite wyvern first, right?”
Without Seon Yul even saying it, Cheon Li Yu instantly understood what he intended to do.
“Of course. We need to secure as many Return Stones as possible.”
Before long, most mana users from Earth-104 would likely realize that killing elite monsters on Earth-001 was the only way to return home.
When that happened, obtaining Return Stones would become more difficult.
So before that fact became widely known, it was best to hunt as many elite monsters as possible.
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