A black haired young man wipes the sweat dripping down from his brow, his blue eyes glow with a purple arcing line of electricity travelling through them, "I have to be nearing the end… I've been through over 1,500 room and killed majority of the enemies inside," he says while straightening his posture.

A flickering of light appears for a moment in the distant tunnel system, the young man readies the now incredibly-battered iron spear, "it's good that you guys are stupid. You block each other from getting through the entrance."

The young man's bodies disappears from where it was, it reappears near a doorway where several successive jabs, reminiscent of a special skill flow forward, land killing blows each time sending the creatures into a rage as they sense the death of their comrades. The dead creatures fall to the ground in the doorway as the young man retreats a few steps then disappears.

He appears at the next doorway where he peers down into the endlessness of this corridor, "Wait, that room looks bigger?," he uses his spiritual sense instead of moving, "it is? What?"

Moving quickly towards this larger room, he brings up the scoreboard; <Active Quest - Sidrock's Curse - Timer - 05:38:12 - Kill points : 1231170>

A large smooth spherical rock room with a flat bottom opens up to the young man as he walks through the doorway ignoring all the creatures that have appeared behind him, a giant door is standing on the far side wall that is solidly shut.

"Looks like a boss room. White?"

'<Yes Master?>'

"Is this a boss room? Can I get outside through that door?"

'<Yes.>'

"How do I open it?"

'<Master chose the destructive path so Master simply need to kill all the enemies that have spawned.>'

"Right," Jack's eyes begin to flash several times causing arcs of lightning to appear on the ground near the wriggling black mass that is making its way through the doorways towards him. The lightning arcs into bigger chains that begin combine and become more powerful frying whatever they touch.

A product of training all this time to control applications of 'Bridging-the-Stars' that has proven to be very useful in crowd control situations or covert operations, further training of spiritual sense will enable it to be used even better including possibly teleportation so far but it certainly lacks the visceral feeling of Heaven's Piercing Stab combined with fireballs as the white-fire within the fireball is an interesting concept itself and has very interesting applications combined with the red-fireball.

The lightning dances about by itself for a moment, Jack releases another charge causing another shockwave of air pressure to burst from the tunnel blowing several of the creatures outside including some larger ones.

Jack twirls the spear around and pictures all his targets within his mind, somehow it has become easier to do this as time progresses like the load on his mind is much lesser than it was before, his spiritual sense pinpointing where everything is at every moment.

'Bunny Dash' he says internally not wanting to open his mouth, his body disappears as then he reappears on the sloped ground nearby with a creature's pierced body hanging off the spear shaft.

He twists his body to pierce three more creatures next to him as they're flying mid-air, that's not all as he disappears again. This time he reappears mid-air with his spear stuck in a larger creature, he cannot pull it out with much force otherwise the spear shaft will snap and it's his only weapon despite being not even worthy of a system item name meaning it's most likely several twigs and a rock tied together…

He pushes these thoughts out of his mind and kicks down on the creature's body, causing him and the creature to both separate with the spear exiting the creature without being snapped.

Jack lands on the ground but quickly finds his position untenable as a creature bites at his leg, he retreats on the awkward sloped surface nearly tripped over noticing many creature are coming in the doorway.

His eyes arc purple causing a burst of lightning to appear, not enough to destroy the landscape but enough to kill most of the creatures yet he finds himself in newly familiar situation, the lightning is coming back towards him. He grits his teeth as he leaps into the air dodging the creatures snapping at his legs, the lightning passes over the entire room in a split moment causing all the creatures to emit smoke and stop moving.

Jack lands on the ground feeling the electricity course through his body, a painful burning-stinging sensation he attempts to control it using his normal internal energy or qi control techniques finding it mildly helpful but nothing can control this unwieldy element, it seems not even the legendary first stage of the myriad arts cultivation technique. That just makes White's technique to control it all that much more special… and questionable.

Purple flashes can be seen far into the distant tunnel, "that has to be it right?" Jack says returning to his feet looking down the tunnel that is now brightly lit and covered with non-moving corpses.

A disgusting squelching noise covers the entire room, Jack looks upwards towards the noise and notices a brand new mass directly above him that wasn't there only a moment ago, several black illusory tendrils appear hanging off it.

Jack raises his spear as he recalls where he saw them, "Vestian!"

<Boss creature appeared; young broodmother lesser queen, defeat the enemy and open the exit!>

A prompt appears on his screen as Jack begins running towards the doorway, there's no way he's standing there with the strange tendrils in striking distance, the doorway is nearby so it's only a few steps away.

Jack's path is suddenly blocked by countless eggs that are hatching creatures, tiny little ones compared to the ones that have been attacking him but their metallic pincer-mandibles say they're not any less dangerous.

"Bunny Dash!," the young man suddenly yells out.

His body disappears from the spot as two large holes appear on the ground where he was, the rubble is blown up a moment later as the tendrils appear then disappear.

Jack lands roughly near the doorway, a purple arcing flash enters his eyes as he looks up at the wriggling mass of loose flesh, "This worked on the other ones, let's see if it works on you."

The flash disappears from his eyes as the room brightens up, a large lightning bolt appears bridging the large body of the creature on the roof and the ground causing a large section of the lesser broodmother's body to blow up yet only about 20% of its mass. Jack immediately uses bunny dash several times to change locations as they come under attack.

He's only allowed a moment of respite when he nears the door again, it seems like the creature doesn't want to touch the door.

Another purple arc enters his eyes, Jack is about to use 'Bridging-the-Stars' again when White speaks to him.

'<Can you come here for a minute? I need to speak to you about something.>'

Jack immediately notices her tone shift and begins to think while closing his eyes, about White and what he knows about the mysterious entity that just showed up one day giving him countless benefits, "why?"

*CRACK*

Jack opens his eyes and notices that he's within his internal space standing next to White, this is his second consciousness that's practising Sky fall within as the strange tree is continuing its process, "Umm."

"Umm," White says while letting out a groan, "you say that too much. What did Master see in you?"

"Well I'm not sure why I'm here when I'm in the middle of a fight," Jack says feeling the land beneath him shift from the volume of new material being created inside, "I haven't even collected all the dead to feed the soil here. You said it was important so…,"

"So…," White lets out a short laugh, "again, it proves true."

"What do you want?," Jack says with a frown, he's in a life or death situation and he's being berated for some nonsensical reason.

"Better," White says looking away into the distance, "I wasn't kidding when I said that Master would be envious of your position. You have many truly unique things that people would covet in the universe, they are attached to you and your identity now. Your karmic fates are linked together."

White turns and faces Jack, her twirling rainbow eyes are mesmerising and haunting at the same time where she quietly stares at him with expressionless.

Jack breaks the tension, "Well short of being able to train thousands of years to learn the basics I'm always going to be just me. I'm trying to adapt to the situations as they come and opportunities are limited when I'm stuck at the home region. What's going on with the battle outside?"

"Why don't you look for yourself?"

Jack thinks back to the battle space he was in moments ago and finds himself there again, "What happened here?," he blurts out.

A giant expanse of a cavern over 1 kilometre in diameter starting where Jack is standing, next to the door of the previously existing cave system, where he cannot see the bottom of as it's simply too dark along with an ominous breeze blowing a foul stench upward.

'<Skyfall when it has saturation beyond 51% needs to be managed carefully otherwise it will have an event such as this, fully enclosed cave systems will come to this result much more quickly. Reach 10% mastery and it will not be an issue, until then this is a possibility.>'

"That's just a matter of time though, I'm already training it as fast as I can."

No response arrives, it seems like White has said all she wanted to and Jack can only assume that she wanted to mention the 51% skyfall convergence saturation issue and given the gigantic multiple kilometre expanse that has been hollowed out of the pure rock… it's a good concern to have yet it's also something that will not be relevant on the surface nor will it be a concern after reaching 10% skill proficiency so a very temporary concern.

A noise comes from behind Jack causing him to turn his body, the large door that he was standing beside is opening up slowly.

<Congratulations, you have completed 'Sidrock's Curse', your total time taken was five hours, fifty eight minutes, fifty two seconds.>

Jack suddenly realises how close he was to the time limit, 6 hours was the initial time limit and he somehow finished it with only one minute remaining despite remembering having over 20 minutes prior to talking with White causing his thoughts to wander for a moment.

The prompt continues drawing Jack's attention again, <Final kill points total:  2713777. Enemy kill count; Small Brood Worker: 45112, Medium Brood Worker: 11101…

A meaningless bunch of numbers appears before Jack's face within the system menu of the game systems that make up the normal user experience of this 'game', the doors makes a banging sound as it slides all the way open revealing a shimmer thin barrier of some sorts. A probe through spiritual sense suggests this isn't a portal while probing with divine sense reveals… the energy is flowing directly through the world itself to sustain the barrier and that it's a negative energy meaning that it will only accept energy going through it in one direction. Not particularly useful information to Jack who can barely understand normal qi flow principles.

Jack walks through the doorway feeling a healing wave of energy wash over his body, not as good as the green energy that his body has sometimes emitted nor as good as Mai's healing but this has the benefit of also restoring internal energy usage as it probes internally without any way to fight against it. Unfortunately the young man didn't use any internal energy as his usage of 'Bridging-the-Stars' is through a direct link with his eyes and the internal space that has a seemingly endless section of lightning energy and clouds that needs to be expressed sometimes so releasing the energy is even helping relieve a form of quiet pressure that builds up within the mind.

He arrives within a brightly lit cavern space with a giant orb sitting near the top of a set of stone stairs. There's no one else around giving a desolate and worrying feeling as if he needs to teleport out of this place, there's a chance things won't work out very well.

<Please touch the orb to select your reward and then teleport outside the 'Sidrock's Curse' space. You will be automatically teleported with a random reward after 15 minutes.>

The system prompt appears before his eyes, Jack dismisses it and walks towards the brightly glowing orb, inspecting it with his spiritual senses reveal that it's simply a city heart orb with its usual surface features and energy signatures.

Jack reaches out and touches the orb causing a prompt to appear before his face.

<Finish Quest:'Sidrock's Curse'?>

Jack selected yes, a repeat of the previous message about congratulations and a total appears which he immediately skips through. The broodmother was worth over three hundred thousand points itself so there should be lots of rewards on offer given previous events.

<Congratulations, please select a reward, You currently have 2713 points;

1.[Lightning Cauldron] (Gold) - 12,000,000... [Unavailable]

2.[Asura Ghost Axe] (Gold) - 10,000,000... [Unavailable]

3.[Silver Dragon Spear] (Silver) - 9,500,000... [Unavailable]

4.[Demon Sealing Sword] (Gold) - 11,000,000... [Unavailable]

5.[Blood Banner] (Epic) - 6,000,000... [Unavailable]

6.[Soaring Heaven Sword] (Half-Epic) - 4,000,000... [Unavailable]

7.[FengChu Pill] - 2,000,000... [Unavailable]

8.[Condensation Pill] - 1,000,000... [Unavailable]

9.[Blood Condensing Pill] - 1,000,000... [Unavailable]

10.[Flesh Bone Restoration Pill] - 1,500,000... [Unavailable]

11.[Soul Nourishing Pill] - 16,000,000... [Unavailable]

Jack goes through the items as the top 10 are unavailable to him finding that most of the lesser items are also unavailable such as pills that would help himself or the population at home, even the seeds are gone showing that he truly arrived late. Only 10 selections or so remaining, things that don't require some sort of physical item.

1. Blessing -> A random length blessing will be bestowed upon you.

2. Weapon upgrade -> ...

3. Armour upgrade -> Enhance armour to next grade.

4. Upgrade skill -> Enhance a skill from lowest grade to higher.

An option catches his eye though as he eyes his forearm, Restriction binding removal -> Utilises the power of the heavens, earth, moon and sun to remove a shackle that may be binding anything.

Xueli always describe her restrictions within her mind as that so he selects that for lack of better option, it seems like he truly did pick the worst route to get through the event.

A wave of energy passes over young man's muscular body as soon as the option is selected, the energy pierces through every part of him as though he is unable to hide as it invades even his mind. Jack's vision internally of one that is being engulfed with a thin-layer of energy, he watches the energy pass over everything unhindered but also not disturbing anything yet as he stands waiting for something to happen. He finds that nothing has actually changed, nothing within his mind has changed nor has Xueli spoken up indicating it did anything.

Jack is about ask White what's going on when he suddenly finds the space around him disappear, it becomes completely pitch-black as though it never existed in the first place but unfortunately gravity didn't disappear.

His body begins to fall.

Jack prevents himself from panicking in this now familiar situation, he has survived even more dire situations than this so falling through an endless black space is nothing…

Several seconds pass when Jack senses a change below him, a sensation he's only vague aware of flashes through his mind as he looks down below and spots no visible change but as he continues to fall the sensation of change doesn't leave. He deploys his divine sense and immediately finds a familiarity with the object but he cannot recall where, like a glass tunnel that's able to go through the surrounding space itself…

'Ah one of those tunnels I took to the moon… shit!,' Jack says internally before recalling the ending to that.

A chilling feeling comes over his body as he enters the glass-like spatial tunnel, the darkness surrounding him quickly shifts into a similar rainbow colour to the Heaven's barrier blocking all the regions, causing him to get distract for just a split moment trying to see if he can spot any familiar landmarks from the last time and not notice the changes below him.

Jack's attention returns downward again, immediately he tenses up his body and throws his spear downwards. The trusty iron spear immediately leaves his hand and flies downward assisted by gravity and Jack's game-world-body enhanced strength piercing through the atmosphere of the spatial tunnel.

The spear embeds itself in something, Jack aims his feet for the spear shaft sticking straight up.

His feet touch the spear shaft, the young man tries to slow himself on the spear shaft but finds that the shaft simply snaps causing him to falter and fall to the solid object the snapped spear was embedded in.

Jack finds the wind knocked out of him as he hits the object hard, which he's now realising is the ground as his eyes scan his new environment, his body begins to tumble along the soft ground before finally coming to a stop on some very soft sand.

Instantly Jack knows where he is as the smells hit his nostrils and the sound hits his ears, "the beach?," he blurts out not taking the moment to look at his surroundings.

"It's the beach, it suffers from the same restrictions as the others. Whoever said coastal regions can bypass the barriers was a liar," a person says nearby.

Jack looks at them then scans his surroundings with his spiritual sense noticing many more people than he thought there'd be, the person who talked looks like a rather poor looking resident with their strange fashion sense but their incredible weapon hanging by their side suggest they're not and judging by their words, there's a good chance they're a player.

"Maybe it's different out on the water, so what's going on here? I just sort of arrived here, I'm Jack."

"Hello Jack, I'm Jared, I just sort of arrived here too. So did everyone else, I think you're actually the last one to arrive."

"Ah well I was doing some quest, I killed the boss with only a minute or so to spare so makes sense if everyone else was doing that quest."

"What quest were you doing?," the man asks.

"Sidrock's curse."

"Ah, northern area quest. I did southern area, 'Jabaloth's Revenge'. Were all the rewards gone by the time you got there too?"

Jack nods his head, "I don't think I got anything, big waste of time."

"Those points are useful on other quests, someone said that temples are going to run them every 9 to 14 days and there's different rewards in each region and area."

"What about the rewards being reset?"

"No one knows but they'd surely reset otherwise what's the point?"

Jack nods his head, "Too bad we're stopped from travelling between regions freely."

"It's easy enough to travel if you don't piss off the system city, just head to one of them and catch a ride."

"True, so what's everyone waiting around here for?"

"Someone left a few hours ago and said they'd organise transportation for all of us. It seems we're far away from anywhere that can help."

Jack looks behind him and spots a thick layer of rainforest without any visible path going through it, "So you're just waiting for them?"

"Yep, I've just spent the last 6 hours fighting off countless bats in a narrow tunnel. The outside is a -25 at my place while here I'm sitting on a tropical beach somewhere relaxing talking to people, what's not to like?"

"Right, so umm, anything going on around here?"