Chapter 74: Divinity
Bonjour found Caelum sitting cross-legged in deep meditation inside the cave.
The surrounding air itself felt noticeably colder around him.
Thinking of startling him awake, Bonjour casually reached forward and shook his shoulder.
But the moment he touched him, an intense chill spread through his fingers.
Frost rapidly formed across his hand as his fingers immediately began freezing solid.
"What the hell?!" Bonjour muttered in shock.
His Arder instantly pulsed through his body, dispersing the ice before permanent damage could occur.
Only then did Caelum slowly open his eyes.
A cold blue light briefly flashed within them.
"I was trying to surprise you," Caelum replied calmly.
The technique he had activated was [Freezing Touch].
Although the System categorized it as a cultivation technique, Caelum personally felt that it resembled a strange form of magic spell.
Still, because it relied entirely upon cultivation rather than mana circles, he mentally decided to classify it as a Daoist Spell instead.
Then suddenly, another idea struck him.
Caelum immediately removed one of the Ice Fruits from his inventory before activating [Freezing Touch] again.
This time, however, he did something different.
Instead of relying purely on Qi, he simultaneously used the mana circulating from the magic circles connected to his heart and attempted to freeze the fruit using both systems together.
And to his surprise, the result was absurdly effective.
The fruit froze instantly before cracks rapidly spread across its surface.
After refining the [Frost Seed Pill], the Ice Star within his Primordial Chaos Core had become significantly stronger, while his affinity toward ice had increased tremendously as well.
’Why didn’t I think of this earlier?’ Caelum wondered inwardly as inspiration rapidly filled his mind.
’The energy core seems connected to cultivation techniques and body-related abilities... while the heart governs spells and magical projections...’
Then his thoughts deepened further.
’If that’s true... then what role does the mind play?’
The more he thought about it, the stranger the connection became.
Cultivation also possessed heart-related sutras and methods designed to align the cultivator’s intent with their techniques.
Meanwhile, magic relied upon circles formed around the heart to project understanding and concepts into reality.
However, magic also touched the mysteries of the world far earlier than ordinary cultivation paths did, whereas cultivators usually required advanced techniques before interacting with such concepts.
"Hahaha..." Caelum suddenly laughed and the laugh sounded slightly strange.
Bonjour silently stared at him with suspicion.
’What exactly is he thinking about now?’ he wondered while watching Caelum laugh weirdly and store the skeleton into his school badge, or rather, his inventory.
Soon afterward, the two boys once again resumed climbing the mountains.
Thanks to Caelum’s [Heaven Reading Eyes], they did not wander aimlessly through the distorted terrain.
At this point, Bonjour trusted Caelum’s sense of direction far more than his own instincts.
If Zusur had still been alive to witness this scene, he would have probably felt incredibly bitter.
After all, it took the knight an entire year to navigate those mountains properly and discover the correct route.
Meanwhile, Caelum was practically speedrunning the entire region through visual hacks.
Unfortunately for Zusur, he was already dead.
After climbing for quite some time, the two eventually arrived near the edge of an enormous cliff.
Caelum calmly looked downward before speaking.
"Now we need to jump from here."
Bonjour immediately stared into the endless drop below them.
"...Are you sure?" he asked with visible doubt.
"Because I feel that we’re jumping straight towards our deaths."
"And I feel like taking a dump." Caelum replied casually.
"..."
Bonjour no longer knew how to respond to that.
Still, after everything they had already experienced together, he chose to trust Caelum anyway.
After all, thanks to him, they had already crossed impossible terrain.
They had crawled through underground tunnels, swum through freezing waters, squeezed through narrow mountain cracks, and survived strange monkeys and Gorillas.
Compared to all that, jumping off a cliff somehow felt normal.
"I feel like this will definitely become one of the greatest adventures of my life, if I survive" Bonjour declared excitedly while stepping closer to the edge.
The two boys exchanged looks before simultaneously preparing themselves.
"Alright then, let’s go!"
And without hesitation, both of them leapt off the cliff while laughing loudly into the freezing winds.
"HAHAHAHA—!"
"WOOOOOOHHHH—!"
***
For what felt like several hours, the two of them continued falling endlessly through the freezing darkness.
Thud! Thud!
Both Caelum and Bonjour landed softly upon solid ground.
"...Damn," Bonjour muttered while getting back onto his feet.
"That was surprisingly anticlimactic."
He looked visibly disappointed.
"I didn’t even see anything while falling."
To him, it had merely felt like jumping down a slightly tall cliff before landing a few moments later.
Nothing more.
Meanwhile, beside him, Caelum stood completely still with widened eyes.
His expression looked as though he had just seen a ghost.
A moment later, he slowly closed his eyes and massaged his forehead while suppressing a growing headache.
’Shit... what the hell was that?’ he thought inwardly in alarm.
Fortunately, none of that panic appeared on his face.
Because what he had just witnessed could only be described as either a miracle, or something terrifyingly beyond his current understanding.
Thanks to his [Heaven Reading Eyes], Caelum had managed to perceive what truly happened during the fall.
From his observations, they had initially fallen roughly a hundred meters downward, but after that, the scenery around them repeated itself again.
And again.
And again.
It was as though they had been trapped inside an infinite loop.
A repeating fall with no true end.
Yet somehow, amidst that endless cycle, a hidden exit occasionally appeared for only a brief instant.
And according to the observations left behind by Zusur, the probability of encountering that exit was only one in seventy-two.
If not for the guidance mapped out by the Knight of Karthenheim, Caelum felt certain that he and Bonjour would have remained trapped within that endless fall for quite some time.
What disturbed him even more, however, was the strange power he sensed within that place.
The force locking everything inside the infinite fall was definitely not ordinary energy.
It felt far stranger.
Far more absolute and somehow ancient.
’Was that... Divinity?’ Caelum wondered silently.
